


Ambivalence

by JenniferNapier



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Gore, Childhood Memories, Death, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Episode Related, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Gore, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Moral Dilemmas, Murder, Mystery, Near Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Q&A, Season 1 Episode 7, Surgery, Suspense, Thriller, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22531396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferNapier/pseuds/JenniferNapier
Summary: Alternate ending of Season 1 Episode 7 “Q&A”--------‘It’s good to have a plan.’But sometimes, things don’t go according to plan. Sometimes, they go better than planned. This was one of those times.Due to a certain patient’s ‘unexpected’ rampage, Claremont Psychiatric Hospital was on lockdown. Jin was suffering from a hemothorax but was nearly breathing again, Ainsley was shooting a riveting documentary about her father's publicly-forgotten talent for saving lives, and Malcolm had ventured out into the halls of the hospital to neutralize the threat, armed with a camera and a single shot taser.However, it was not Malcolm who returned to Dr. Whitly’s cell. It was Tevin. Now, the only things standing between Ainsley and a madman who demanded an interview were an unbarricaded door, an unarmed guard, and an unchained monster.
Relationships: Ainsley Whitly & Jin, Ainsley Whitly & Martin Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Ainsley Whitly, Malcolm Bright & Martin Whitly, Martin Whitly & Tevin Standing
Comments: 107
Kudos: 234





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I started watching Prodigal Son, and now I'm hooked. I loved Episode 7 so much that I had to write a fic about it. I can't wait to see what else this show has in store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Image by: https://rylanmakes.tumblr.com/

The hospital was dark, save for the crimson lights that ebbed through the hallways. It appeared as if the building had suffered deep internal wounds that pulsed with an agonizing ache. The effect gave off an eerie atmosphere which heightened Malcolm Bright’s senses. His hands no longer shook. One of them gripped the taser at his side while the other held the camera to his shoulder.

If his therapist had been present, she would have asked how he was feeling in this moment. He would have answered that he felt at peace, which was very rare for him. The threat of danger-- specifically, danger that he knew he could face and had at least some control over-- seemed to be the only remedy that could calm, harness, and overpower his anxieties and the tremors that accompanied them. That was why he enjoyed his work.

He knew that it wasn't normal to feel that way. But it didn’t disturb him, because he knew that his head was in the right place. He was not currently facing this danger to seek an unhealthy thrill. He was facing it for his sister, and for her boyfriend who needed medical attention. _Professional_ medical attention. The kind of medical attention that was _not_ serving multiple life sentences for homicide. The kind of medical attention that was not The Surgeon’s.

In a way, Malcolm was doing this for their father too. He was doing this to _end_ the man’s suspiciously coincidental opportunity to save the day and appear like the good guy in front of his daughter. Because he _wasn't_ the good guy. He never was, despite what Malcolm used to believe, a long time ago.

Malcolm Bright stalked through the vacant halls as if they were his own hunting grounds. He was ready to face yet another killer.

Or at least, he thought he was.

* * *

Ainsley took a steadying breath as her fingers curled around the handle of her Sony camera. The piece of equipment provided a familiar heaviness that balanced out the quaking of her adrenaline-fueled arms. Her hazel gaze was locked onto the camera’s field monitor as she angled the device to frame The Surgeon-- and the body he operated on. Her brother had offered to help Jin first. But the scalpel had shaken so much in his trembling hand, it’d been a blur. He hadn’t been prepared to partake in anything so gory and meticulous as this.

But The Surgeon had.

Malcolm couldn’t handle being there, with their father, watching his performance. The profiler had hated it. He’d demanded for her to stop filming, but she hadn’t stopped. She’d sent him away so she could focus on collecting her footage without interruption. Now, in the private silence that Malcolm had left them in, the reporter became captivated by the man on her screen. Unlike Malcolm’s hands, Dr. Martin Whitly’s were steady. He manipulated flesh the way an artist manipulated wet clay. Gently, almost lovingly, but with an efficient and knowledgeable authority. Sure, the work was messy, but it was also fascinating to watch. Strangely enough, it was even soothing. 

The man’s calmness was contagious, and it easily infected Ainsley. Her heart stopped drumming, her breathing settled, and her mind grew clear. Miraculously, the young woman was taken-- if only temporarily-- to a place of peace. She may as well have been filming a serene nature documentary.

While The Surgeon worked in his element, Ainsley also worked in her own. She kept her subject in frame. She minded the thirds, particularly the lower one, in case the editors put a banner over her shot in post. She adjusted the iris to accommodate for the light that descended from the windows and gave the man the effect of an angelic halo. Above all, and without necessarily _meaning_ to, Ainsley made him look good on camera. He was easy to interview _now,_ when there wasn't any contention strung between them. When neither of them were intent on securing a biased angle to the story. When they were each occupied with the brutal, truthful reality of the situation they’d found themselves in.

Somehow, as Ainsley filmed him and his precise MacGyver work, she forgot about the mental institution. She forgot about the escaped patient, and forgot about her brother who had gone out to apprehend said patient. She even forgot that her own boyfriend was the one under The Surgeon’s knife.

“The goal is to drain as much blood as we can.”

His voice was soft and pleasant. He spoke as if he was leading her through a meditative session. Contrary to the chaotic circumstances, he appeared completely at ease and in control.

That was because he _was._

So far.

The coffee pot beside him filled with red liquid as the tube attached to it dripped with the blood that was previously pooled in Jin’s pleural cavity. If one looked at the improvised contraption long enough, it almost appeared like Dr. Whitly was making an early morning brew, freshly squeezed, which only Hannibal Lecter could appreciate.

“...create a negative pressure system….”

He spoke of Jin as if he were just a body. A soulless object. Not a person. Perhaps it was wrong of Ainsley to feel comforted by such an emotionless perspective, but she did find some solace in it. When a body that was so profusely bleeding, on the verge of death, and being sliced into like a Thanksgiving dinner happened to be one’s romantic partner, one almost _had_ to cling to a sense of separation-- or else succumb to utter panic. Ainsley much rather preferred to be comforted by her disassociation than to be consumed by her fear.

Ainsley wondered if-- in order to perform the kind of work they did-- it was necessary for _all_ surgeons to balance their compassion with a sense of unempathetic callousness. She also wondered if it was a learned talent or a natural one, specifically in Dr. Whitly’s case. She wondered a lot of things specifically in Dr. Whitly’s case. 

She had an insatiable amount of questions to ask him. She knew that no amount of time, privacy, or hard-earned trust could provide her enough opportunity to ask them all. Her questions churned in her subconscious, forming a bottomless ocean that threatened to sink her raft and drown her. Ainsley had long ago accepted the fact that she’d spend her whole life floating on those questions, wondering about the monsters that lurked in the depths of their darkness.

But with this chance to interview him, she’d found a sign of solid ground. She’d found a way to get answers from him. This chance had greeted her in the form of a rock peeking through the waves of mystery, perhaps providing evidence to the peak of a buried mountaintop. Ainsley had to believe that-- as her questions were answered, as she learned more and more about him-- then maybe her ocean would recede enough that she’d finally be able to step onto dry land. She had to believe that _then_ her world would be uncovered. That _then_ her world would become stable. That _then,_ her world would make sense.

_SLAM._

The camera shook as Ainsley startled. Her blonde curls whipped over her shoulder as she glanced behind herself. Mr. David, who was standing at the cell’s open doorway, had jumped as well. He craned his head to look down the hall at the red door, which somewhat muffled the escaped patient’s impatient yelling, but not as much as they would have liked it to. Tevin’s manic voice was incoherent, _loud,_ and frantically demanding.

Dr. Whitly glanced up for a moment, but remained wholly undisturbed. A cool, perhaps slightly sarcastic murmur of, “Well, look who's back,” purred from his lips as he concentrated on his work. A layer of plastic crinkled under his wet hands while he applied it as a dressing to the surgical site on Jin’s ribs.

_SLAM._

_“I wan’ my innerview!”_

Ainsley’s heart rate skyrocketed again. If the inmate was _here,_ then where was Malcolm? She set her camera down beside where she knelt and leaned to glance down the hall. She flinched at another _SLAM._

_“I wan’ it! I wan’ it!”_

With every smack and yank of the door, the camera pan handle that was wedged in it jostled and loosened.

_SLAM._

Dr. Whitly murmured in the same cool, sarcastic tone, “You have to admire his persistence.”

Mr. David stepped into the hall, his hand moving to his belt. But his holster was empty. “Malcolm took my taser,” the guard fearfully reminded them.

“As he should have. Shame he didn't use it,” Dr. Whitly grumbled with a hint of irritability in his warm tone.

_SLAM._

Ainsley looked up at Mr. David with wide eyes. “What are we gonna do?”

_SLAM._

The guard didn’t appear to have an answer for her, so Dr. Whitly provided him one. “You have _one job,_ Mr. David. Keep my guests safe.” The Surgeon rested his unshackled, glistening, ruby-coated wrists in the air as he looked up from his work. “So, I suggest you do your job.”

_SLAM!_

The pan handle fell from the door. The sound of it clattering to the vinyl floor echoed through the hallway like doomsday bells. Luckily, Mr. David had enough courage (and common sense) to act fast. “Stay there,” he ordered the reporter as he left the cell and closed the door behind him. Before it shut with the harsh click of an electronic lock, Ainsley heard Tevin enter the hallway shouting, _“I WANNA BE ON TV!”_

Mr. David’s own shouts sounded like whispers in comparison. Both men’s voices were muffled by the wall-- which Ainsley pressed her back against. She packed herself into the space where olive brown paint met that of red brick, hugging her camera close. Her breath was uncontrollable as she fumbled to angle the lens up at the dingy windows behind her.

Shouting turned into screaming as the sounds of a struggle commenced. Like the tremors of an earthquake, she felt the reverberation of a body falling against the wall behind her. Ainsley jumped and shut her eyes tightly as she bowed her head. She told herself that the barrier separating them from the maniac was impenetrable, that the glass was built to withstand the violence of unruly patients.

The noise did not distract Dr. Whitly, who continued tidying up his work and ensuring the edges of the dressings were secured with enough medical tape.

While risking a peek at the field monitor in her lap, Ainsley witnessed what her camera saw above her. A blood-streaked window.

It was now impossible for her to forget that she was in a mental institution. She tried not to listen to the terrors outside the door, yet she heard it all crystal clear. Every scream, every gargle, every cough. The sounds of a body repeatedly being hit, the sounds of a wet gasp repeatedly being sputtered. She knew better than to hope that those were the sounds of Tevin dying, and not Mr. David.

Then, for a moment of reprieve, she heard nothing. She dared to believe that perhaps she’d been wrong. That perhaps Mr. David _had_ been the victor. The yawning silence was equally as frightening as the prior savagery.

She stared at the field monitor in her lap, taking a shaky breath and readjusting her camera to point up at the window above her. The blood-streaked panel was empty, and the silence hovered. The young woman looked up from the curtain of her blonde curls, debating whether or not to stand up and take a glance into the hall. She almost did, until another SLAM spooked a gasp out of her lungs.

“AINSLEY?”

She shriveled against the wall again, balled tightly around her Sony with a fearful tension as another trio of _SLAMs_ shook the cell. Squinting through teary eyes, she saw Tevin in her camera’s monitor, banging on the window above her and scanning the far side of the room with wild, asymmetrical eyes.

_“AINSLEY! IT’S MY TURN!”_

Ainsley shivered as the cacophonous demands continued. She closed her eyes, allowing a couple of tears to run down her cheeks as she clamped her palm over her mouth, pressing her sobs and terror deep within herself.

_“AINSLEY! I WANT MY INNERVIEW!”_

Tevin stalked the length of the cell wall, which felt very thin to the reporter, and no longer protective. He smacked every window before he poured his desperate rage into a series of mighty yanks upon the door handle. 

As he did this, Ainsley prayed. She prayed for Malcolm to run in and shoot the maniac straight in the back with that taser. Alternatively, she prayed that the SWAT team would run in and shoot the maniac straight in the back with a powerful tranquilizer. Or, at this point, whatever they _had_ to shoot him with. More than anything, she prayed for God to allow her, Jin, and Malcolm to return home safely.

_“AINSLEEEEY!”_

She assured herself again and again that the cell was locked. That Tevin wasn't getting in. That she was safe in there. Or at least, that she was safe in the very claustrophobic, small sliver of space marked out for her. The wall and the red line on the ground trapped her between two monsters.

Ainsley struggled to breathe. Her knuckles were cold, clammy, and pale as she gripped her camera-- clutching it to her body as if it were a very expensive, very bulky, and ultimately ineffective shield. She wanted _out._ She wanted fresh air. She wanted to embrace her mother, who had always been more of a cold, condescending sort of person than a warm and protective one. She wanted Jin or Malcolm to hold her in their strong arms and convince her that everything was going to be alright. More than anything else, she wanted to believe it.

“I SEE YOU!”

She sniffled as her lips trembled.

“I SEE YOU, AINSLEY!”

She didn’t look up. She didn’t look at her screen. She didn’t try to hold in her sobs anymore. She removed her hand from her mouth and placed them both to the sides of her head, closing her palms tightly over her ears as Tevin continued to pound the glass and scream.

“OPEN THE DOOR, AINSLEY! OPEN THE DOOR!”

Her camera slumped between her knees, and she gave up holding it. The footage, the documentation, even the interview-- none of it was worth this. It wasn't worth Jin getting stabbed. It wasn't worth losing Malcolm. It wasn't worth her terror. As much as she wanted answers, as much as she wanted to get to know her father, it wasn't worth--

Tevin was no longer banging on the wall or shouting. Ainsley only realized this because she was able to hear a gentle, muffled, “Sweetheart,” in her father’s voice. Magically, it brought a calmness into the atmosphere again.

She hesitantly removed her hands from her ears, ready to clap them against her head if Tevin made any more racket from the hall. The woman opened her eyes to peer into the field monitor in her lap. It showed her what her camera saw; Jin’s chest, wrapped in plastic with a tube sticking out of it-- and _breathing._ Ever so subtly, his rib cage expanded and deflated.

The reporter raised her head, her blonde curls swaying to the sides of her damp face. Dr. Whitly knelt beside Jin, thoroughly wiping his hands on the corner of the cameraman’s plaid shirt as if it were a towel.

Martin smiled at her. It was a warm, knowing, and perhaps even sympathetic smile.

“Everything’s going to be alright,” he reassured.

For a second, she believed him.

Until his eyes flickered to the cell door and he eased a conditional, _“But…"_

Ainsley’s heart drummed in her chest.

Martin gave her deep nod, warning, “You need to get behind me."

Ainsley’s panicked breath shuffled through her throat in an arrhythmic pattern as she hissed, _“What?”_

“He's going to come in,” Dr. Whitly glanced down as he slid the bloody coffee pot closer to Jin’s body. “Any moment now.”

Ainsley looked over to the locked door, then up to the windows. Somebody was scurrying around outside the cell, fumbling with something. Then, she looked to the floor and stared at the crisp red line that stretched from one end of the room to the other. The line that ran underneath Jin. The line that served as a border to the afterlife. The line that one did _not_ cross, unless they wished for a painful death.

She had been shocked by her father’s absurd request to traverse that forbidden line. Forbidden by _law,_ and even _more_ binding, forbidden by the internal government of her own instincts for survival.

_No,_ she was _not_ crossing that line. No fucking _way_ she was crossing that line.

“He's getting the _key...”_ Martin dragged out a cautionary tone as he tucked the medical tools back into the no-longer-white case at his side.

Ainsley remained frozen. She strained to listen to the quiet sounds of shifting and rummaging outside the cell. She was only able to vaguely register what he meant; that Tevin was getting the cell’s special key _from Mr. David’s corpse._

Doubt seized her next, and she shook her head as she told herself that he was lying. That it was a trick. That maybe Malcolm was the one out there rummaging around, not Tevin. Still, she was too afraid to stand up and see for herself.

“You need to get behind me,” he repeated, growing terse.

She continued to weakly shake her head, her eyes locking onto his.

The sounds of shuffling changed. Less rummaging, more stepping. Someone was hurrying toward the cell door.

_“Now.”_ Martin’s voice snapped with a sharp bite, no longer soft. Instead, it erupted with the same scratchiness that it’d bore when she’d provoked him with accusations of being a bad father. It was another glimpse of something raw, honest, and _threatening_ inside of him, and it lasted all of one second.

The door’s buzzer punctuated his demand as the digital lock unlatched. 

Ainsley did not move.

That is, until the door was yanked open and she was deafened by a scream of her name, no longer muffled by the barrier between them.

_“AINSLEY!”_

The woman abandoned her camera and lunged for that red line.


	2. Chapter 2

That line was no longer a dangerous, forbidden, sinister thing. It was just a line. Just paint on the floor. Truthfully, it wasn't even there anymore. Or at least, the threshold it represented wasn’t there anymore. Because now, nowhere was safe. No boundaries existed. It was all part of an unlawful, ruthless, uninhabitable wilderness.

The cell was no longer a cell. It was just a room, and at that moment Ainsley had to get to the _other_ side of the room as fast as possible. She bolted for the far wall, wishing that she could crash right through it. But all she could do was collide against it, turn, and press her back to it.

Meanwhile, The Surgeon calmly rose to face his latest visitor. It didn’t take long for a pleasant smile to flourish across his bearded face. “Tevin!” He greeted the other inmate with delight, announcing, “You’re just in time for your interview!”

Tevin stood in front of him, panting, struggling to pull his disjointed gaze off Ainsley and onto Dr. Whitly. “My innerview,” he muttered ravenously, clearly itching for it.

“Yes,” Dr. Whitly nodded to commend his enthusiasm as his gaze flickered across all of the blood that stained Tevin’s uniform. It was as if he was admiring a piece of art that Tevin was wearing. A knife glinted crimson in Tevin’s fidgeting hand.

Ainsley flattened herself against the red brick beside Dr. Whitly’s cot, wishing to disappear into the darkest corner of the room.

Tevin was very distracted. He spotted the two empty tripods and searched for the camera, finding it on the ground to his right. “No!” he barked, rushing to it. “No, NO!”

Dr. Whitly followed him laterally, stepping toward the corner where Ainsley had previously huddled with a steady, slow rhythm. “It’s alright, Tevin.” His tether skimmed across the rug behind him, just shy of floating taut.

Tevin passed his grubby, bloodied hands over the camera, examining it without method as his face grew flushed with worry. While Ainsley preferred his attention to be on anything other than her, she also grimaced as she watched him place his violating touch on her equipment. The knife in Tevin’s hand haphazardly scraped against the body of the camera, wiping blood over it.

Dr. Whitly held out a palm. “Would you hand that to me?”

“IT’S BROKEN!” Tevin spat acidicly. His head snapped up to throw a hateful look at the cowering reporter, but Dr. Whitly stood in the way of his line of sight.

“Let me see it,” The Surgeon’s hand extended as he offered his infectious calm.

Tevin’s anger subsided, and his focus scrambled as he awkwardly lifted the Sony and stood up.

“That’s it, give it here,” The Surgeon patiently encouraged again, eyeing his erratic movements. “Careful, now.”

Tevin very carelessly shoved the camera into the older man’s arms and hovered close by with hot breath. It was no secret that he’d consumed a bologna and provolone sandwich for lunch. Fortunately, the odor was overpowered by the smell of metallic blood that clung to him like a cloud.

Dr. Whitly received the camera and concealed a small laugh, humored by the ironic way Tevin roughly handled the precious device. Martin cradled the camera in his arm like it was an infant, adjusting the tilt of the field monitor and the alignment of the light fixture attached to the top, which had both been bumped askew. 

His touch was much more kind.

Of course it was. That was his daughter’s camera. The camera she previously used to film the outburst that she’d provoked. And now it was in his hands. He smirked as his fingers passed over the buttons, wiping the blood from them. Irony was abound.

“Is it broken?” Tevin sniveled, his fist clenching spasmodically around the handle of his knife. It was a small kitchen knife, Ainsley noticed. She briefly wondered how the _hell_ he’d obtained it. An in-depth story about Claremont’s shitty security was surely on the agenda.

“No, it’s functioning just fine,” Dr. Whitly murmured, smiling contentedly at the device. Tevin didn’t look any less anxious. The Surgeon opened an arm to gesture at where a folding chair rested in the corner near the bookshelf. It was the one Mr. David had been sitting in earlier, before the lockdown. “Have a seat.” 

Tevin whipped his gaze over to it, then eagerly obeyed, rushing for the chair. Ainsley watched as he narrowly missed stepping on Jin’s arm. It seemed the inmate wasn't even aware of the body on the floor. The man who _he_ had stabbed. At the moment, she was too afraid to feel any resentment.

“We would _love_ to hear _all_ about your story,” Dr. Whitly declared, stepping toward the center of the room with the camera cradled securely in his arm. His thumb subtly passed over another button on the console before landing on the selection arrows.

Tevin placed himself in the chair, but practically leaned out of it as he peered at the camera like a canine eager to fetch a tennis ball that was about to be thrown by his master. Ainsley watched the monsters move through the room, one scrambling, one stalking. Although Tevin was now diagonally across the room from her, she didn’t feel any better about her position. Especially when Dr. Whitly asked her to change it.

“Sweetheart, grab your tripod.”

Her eyes flashed to his as he turned over one shoulder to smile at her. He nodded and sent a gesturing hand toward the thing. It perched in the area that Tevin had just departed.

“Go on, we haven’t got all day,” he grinned, just shy of a chuckle.

She hesitantly left her corner, torn between carefully watching him and carefully watching Tevin. Neither of them made any sudden movements.

Dr. Whitly faced their interviewee again, whose wild eyes bore into Ainsley’s withered soul. “Do you know what you’re going to say, Tevin?”

Tevin then focused into the glass eye of the camera, though neither of his own eyes looked in agreement with each other. “Oh yes. Yes, I know exactly what I’m-- I’m-- I killed them. I _killed_ them. I had to. I _liked_ it.” As he rambled, he played with the knife in his hands.

“Good,” Dr. Whitly murmured, not really listening. His focus was still on the control panel of the camera.

Ainsley’s focus was on her tripod, which she now had in her quivering hands. For a moment, she wondered if it would be an effective defensive weapon. If it was light enough for her to wield, and if it was heavy enough to do damage. If it would be better to wield it with its legs open or closed. Perhaps the former would be best, at least for it to act as an obstacle to keep them somewhat away from her, should either of them come into close range.

Her mind whirled with calculations of survival.

She risked a glance toward the open cell door, wondering if it would be wise to try to dash through it. Tevin would certainly run after her, but then she’d only have _one_ of them to worry about. Was it foolish to hope that she could make it through the door before Tevin caught up to her? Was it foolish to believe that maybe she could slam the door shut and keep it that way-- with only her own strength pitted against Tevin’s? 

Yes, it was foolish. He’d taken down trained guards twice her size. She had zero chance of winning that matchup. But maybe it was worth the risk. Maybe she’d make it into the outer hallways. Maybe she’d be able to scream for Malcolm. Maybe she’d find him, and he’d have his taser ready, and then--

“Ainsley,”

She looked back at her father, and somehow, her panic dispersed.

He pointed in the space between where he stood and the cot in the corner where she’d sought refuge. “Place it right there, okay?” he instructed with an underlying reassurance. Her gaze locked onto his eyes, where a secret message was written. It told her that they were playing a game. A game they _had_ to play, and a game he needed her to participate in. There was no fear in his gentle eyes. Only a steady, serious urgency. With a small nod, he conveyed to her, ‘You can do this.’

Ainsley pitifully nodded back, caught in a daze. She could do this. She could do this. She just had to do what she was told, and everything would be alright. As long as both of his visitors did what they were told-- what _Dr. Whitly_ told them to do-- they would both get what they wanted. She would be safe, and Tevin would get his interview.

The reporter adhered to the diplomatic compromise, picking up her tripod with both hands and returning to the space behind Dr. Whitly. 

Tevin watched her with a pinched expression. “Why over there?” he whined. Dr. Whitly began to come up with some bullshit explanation, but Tevin shouted above his soothing voice, _“I wannit closer!”_

“Tevin,” Dr. Whitly warned patiently.

“CLOSER!” Tevin shot out of his chair, standing up as if someone had hit a high striker with the force of a metric ton. Ainsley flinched, her fingers tightening around the smooth metal of the tripod.

Martin lifted a hand in the air, his own voice raising to snatch Tevin’s attention, “ALRIGHT!”

Tevin had never witnessed Dr. Whitly snap, and he looked afraid for a moment.

With a smile and a huff, Martin patted the air and amended more gently, “Alright, Tevin, we’ll bring it closer.” He glanced back at his daughter and tilted his head to beckon her forward. Returning his focus on the agitated Tevin, he eased, “Just… have a seat, and we’ll get this set up for you.”

Tevin slowly took his seat, in disbelief of the undiscovered danger he’d heard in Dr. Whitly’s voice, and wary of initiating its return. But his shock would not last forever.

Ainsley hadn’t moved.

 _"Quickly,”_ Dr. Whitly added with a heavy dose of false cheer. A clownish smile was plastered on his bearded cheeks.

Ainsley moved.

She lifted her tripod and placed it a few feet forward.

Tevin was so unsatisfied with her progress, he appeared physically stung. _“Closer!”_ he demanded, his angry gaze drilling into her.

Dr. Whitly watched the other inmate intensely, and Tevin nervously struggled to apply some self control.

Ainsley swallowed and picked up her tripod again, cutting the distance between them by another third.

 _“Closer,_ I wannit, I wannit _closer,”_ Tevin obsessively shifted in his seat, trying to practice his manners. The knife spun in his grip, flashing a spot of light across the room.

Ainsley closed her eyes as a tear threatened to run down her cheek again. The reporter reluctantly obeyed. Sunlight from the exterior windows poured over her, but it brought her no warmth or comfort. Only the feeling of exposure, like stepping into a spotlight.

Tevin continued muttering harshly at her, but she didn’t dare step any nearer to her father’s back.

 _“I wanna be CLOSER!”_ Tevin shouted, bursting to his feet again. He brought his chair with him as he charged over the red line. He was stopped by the flash of a bright LED fixture.

Dr. Whitly held the camera on his shoulder, grinning from behind the blinding light. “Perfect!” he barked merrily. “That looks great, Tevin!”

Tevin stared into the light like a malformed doe frozen on a highway. He floated over his chair, half-sitting, mesmerized, a moth attracted to a flame.

“Place the tripod beside me, Ainsley,” Dr. Whitly instructed pleasantly. 

The woman also felt like she was being drawn closer to a flame, though completely unwillingly. His proximity burned-- practically causing her actual pain-- but she eventually came to stand next to her father.

“That’s good there,” his sugar-coated voice rewarded her. 

Her fingers trembled as she removed them from the tripod, abandoning her only defensive tool. She tried not to look at him, but that was difficult to do, especially when he turned to hand her the camera off his shoulder. “Here you are.”

Air passed breathlessly through her lips as she received the camera from him. It was impossible to avoid touching him during the exchange. His forearms were well-shaped, lightly haired, and discolored with the stain of Jin’s dried blood. Trails of electricity ran down Ainsley’s hands where his fingers brushed against them. He transferred the camera carefully, as if it were a baby. She swallowed, wondering if Malcolm had felt this level of fear when he’d handed the man a scalpel.

The scalpel.

Her heart thundered in her chest. She glanced behind her, to the medical kit beside Jin. It was closed. She couldn't see what was in it, but she deeply doubted the doctor had put the scalpel back. With the camera in her arms, she took three hurried steps away from The Surgeon, whirling to look at him again, wondering where the weapon was. Hidden in a pocket? Up a sleeve?

Dr. Whitly appeared not to notice her reaction, peacefully moving to grab his desk chair and roll it beside the tripod. “Go ahead, sweetie, get it set up,” he smiled at her, taking his folded cardigan from the back of the chair. He tugged his green sleeves town to his wrists before slipping his arms through those of the soft beige cardigan.

Ainsley stepped up to the tripod, watching him warily. She lifted the camera to latch it onto the base, doing her best not to become distracted by her fears. The camera was no longer recording. The reporter furrowed her brow as she pressed the red button and adjusted what she needed to. There was no timer on the recording settings. Someone had manually stopped it since she’d last touched it. Likely, her father.

What else had he fiddled with while it was in his hands? There was no time to check the footage stored on the memory, and even if he had deleted it all (or at the very least, a certain part of it,) that would be the _least_ of her problems at the moment. So she let those questions go.

After adjusting the iris and focus, she took a deep breath, removing her hands from the camera. “Alright, Tevin. We’re ready.”

Tevin’s enchanted trance fizzled as he scrutinized the reporter. He lifted a crooked, bloody finger at her. “Don’t I get one of those?!”  
  
She stared at him, scared and confused.  
  
“Here, Tevin, you can have mine,” Dr. Whitly answered, unclipping the mic and receiver pack from his uniform. He stepped over to the murderer to wire him up.

Ainsley glanced down at the mic on her own jacket, then glanced between them, hesitant to relax.

Tevin’s knee bounced at the rate of a mouse’s heartbeat but he sat obediently while Dr. Whitly clipped the lapel mic to his scarlet-dyed collar. The Surgeon’s hands worked in a precise manner, very close to the other inmate’s throat. The kitchen knife continued to dance in Tevin’s hands as his excitement grew. The blade twirled rather close to Dr. Whitly’s stomach as he leaned over the man, but neither seemed to notice. It was unclear if that was due to trust or ignorance.

“I can’t wait. _I can’t wait!_ I’m gonna be on TV!” Tevin’s expression twitched through a series of grins, his eyes simultaneously vacant and busy.

“Yes, you are,” Dr. Whitly cooed, placing the mic pack in the pocket of the man’s unzipped hoodie. 

Tevin’s gaze did not completely focus on the older man, but he suddenly whispered a devout, _“Thank you.”_

Ainsley furrowed her brow, uncertain if the madman was referring to the simple gift of the microphone.

Dr. Whitly grinned with a hint of embarrassment, advising the other inmate, “Don’t.” When he was finished, he sighed and straightened his back before lowering his eyes to the weapon in Tevin’s hand. “Would you like me to hold that for you?”

Tevin appeared like he didn’t know what he was referring to, then glanced down and remembered that he had a knife in his hands.

Ainsley stopped breathing, unsure if she would rather Dr. Whitly have the blade than Tevin. She found herself debating which was the lesser of two evils, and she found herself unable to decide.

After a pause of thought, Tevin’s grip clenched around his treasure, hissing, _“No,_ it’s mine!”

Dr. Whitly smiled falsely. “So be it.” 

The Surgeon walked back to his chair empty handed. Ainsley kept herself on the other side of the tripod from him.

“Let’s get started, shall we?” Martin took a seat, gathering the slack in his cable to allow it to naturally coil on the floor beside him, out of the way. 

Ainsley eyed it as if it were a venomous snake.

“Why don’t you tell us about your… _parents,_ Tevin?” Dr. Whitly suggested, folding his hands in his lap and settling in as if preparing to hear a _really_ good story. One that he’d heard before, and enjoyed.

One that Ainsley would appreciate, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, here's where the trigger warning for violence and gore comes in. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Tevin stared at Dr. Whitly. “My parents?” he breathed, lost in thought.

“Yes,” The Surgeon nodded. He leaned back in the desk chair, casually resting one ankle upon his other knee. His fingers were loosely laced together while his thumbs slowly circled each other. “Did they love you?”

Tevin shook his head.

Ainsley’s face set with suspicion.

“Did they hurt you?”

Tevin nodded his head, muttering, “Yes, _yes.”_

“How did they hurt you?” Dr. Whitly asked with proper neutrality.

“They told me they didn’t want to look at me. They called me _ugly,”_ Tevin hissed, massaging the handle of his knife.

Martin chuckled. “While that’s not very nice, it’s not exactly what I was getting at.” He tipped his head forward and tried a better question, “What was the _worst_ thing they did to you, Tevin?”

“They gave me baths.”

Ainsley searched for her father’s angle. It was like trying to peer through a fog as thick as molasses.

Dr. Whitly continued to steer the interview to a destination only he knew. “What kinds of baths?”

Tevin started to hyperventilate. His eyes darted across the ground between them. “I-- I couldn’t breathe. The soap stung my eyes.”

“Well, that’s because it wasn't _soap,_ was it?” Martin eased, walking him through his traumatic memories. “They used toxic cleaning solutions instead.”

Ainsley’s lip curled, and she tried not to imagine what that experience must have felt like.

“It burned,” Tevin recalled with an angry wince. His knuckles were white. “It was amin-- am--amon, ammonia…”

“Yes, and they _trapped_ you in the bathroom until you were _all_ clean, didn’t they?” Martin’s voice dragged through the air, painting the colorful picture.

Tevin’s expression festered as he vigorously nodded.

Ainsley made a putrid face as she closed her eyes and turned her head away. Dr. Whitly was making this poor, sick man recollect his childhood abuse, and for what? To present Tevin as a victim, like how he tried to present himself as a saint on camera? Ainsley didn’t agree with that. While she felt a little sorry for the madman, she also knew that he was not faultless. He’d stabbed _Jin._ He’d _killed_ Mr. David. A history of abuse, no matter how terrible, did not justify those crimes.

Unbeknownst to the reporter, her father glanced over at her before moving on to his next question. “What happened if you didn’t listen to them, Tevin?”

Tevin spat, “They _kicked_ me. Like _this!”_ He gave a mighty kick from his seat. The chair underneath him scooted from the force.

Ainsley flinched.

“And what else?”

“They punched me.” His fist flew through the empty air with the striking speed of a professional boxer, though it held nowhere near the same coordination. “Like _this!”_ The back legs of his chair jumped from the violent shift of his weight.

Ainsley flinched again.

The Surgeon did not react to Tevin’s aggressive movements, only asking with a curious tilt of his head, “Did that hurt?” 

_“Yes,”_ Tevin nodded so profusely, his cheeks shook. “A-a lot. They _broke_ me.”

“What else did they do to you?”

“They locked me _outside,”_ Tevin wauled, repeatedly leaning back and forth in his seat. “In the snow. They told me to chop wood. They _took_ the wood I chopped. They took it inside. They put it in the fire. It kept them warm. But they told me I couldn’t-- I couldn’t come back inside until I chopped down the whole forest.”

“Did you chop down the whole forest?”

“No,” Tevin shook his head, staring at the rug. “No, I tried, but I couldn’t do it.”

The deranged man began to smile a crooked smile. “But I got real good at chopping.” He drew his attention back up to The Surgeon as he began to snicker, “Real good.” He lifted his head up and wheezed with laughter, staring into the bright light above the lens of the camera. “So I chopped-- I chopped _THEM UP!”_

This was news to Ainsley. She hadn’t known Tevin’s story. She hadn’t known a thing about him, until now. She stared at him with terrified eyes, easily able to imagine him hacking away at a body. Splitting bone like logs. Snapping limbs like branches. Breaking someone into fragments.

“Would you say they were…” Dr. Whitly pretended to think about the appropriate adjective to use. “ _Good_ parents?” 

Tevin shook his head, but he wondered if he was answering the question right. He didn’t know what a good parent was.

“No, of course not,” Dr. Whitly sympathized. “It sounds like they were incredibly _bad_ parents.”

“They were bad. They were very bad,” Tevin repeated, nodding.

“Yes, and look what that did to _you,”_ Dr. Whitly lifted a hand to gesture at the man. “You’re….” He chuckled, then began to list on his fingers, “Well, you’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia... you exhibit disorganized, negative, and dissociative symptoms... you clearly have an underdeveloped brain-- and very _violent_ tendencies--” he stopped counting as he ran out of breath. Dr. Whitly recovered it through laughter as he tossed his hands up, “Need I go on?”

Ainsley spoke up with a simmering anger in her voice. “No, you don’t.” 

Martin innocently glanced over at her.

“I get the _point,”_ she growled, her arms tightly crossed beneath her chest. She clenched her jaw, sickened. Her blonde curls swayed as she looked at the rug beneath her. She surrendered, “You weren’t a bad father, Dr. Whitly.”

She surrendered so he would stop. So this _torture_ \--both Tevin’s and hers-- would _stop._ He had been using Tevin’s story as an example. A cruel comparison. An indirect counter-attack to what she’d thrown at him earlier. All to get her to admit what he wanted her to.

Martin feigned cluelessness, murmuring with a pleasantly-surprised, “Oh, well thank you, dear.” Yet he looked smug all the same. He turned back to their interviewee. “Honestly, Tevin, I think what you did was… admirable.”

Ainsley hissed a shocked, _“What?”_

“They deserved it, didn’t they?” Martin asked her over his shoulder, defending his claim. “They were _horrible_ to him.”

Ainsley shook her head. There was so much wrong about what he’d said, she didn’t even know where to begin. “That doesn’t--”

Tevin watched their argument distantly, still stunned by the memories that swirled in his bruised mind.

Martin gently interrupted his daughter to broadcast his opinion. “Sweetheart, you don’t _have_ to agree with me, but _I_ believe that parents are supposed to _love_ their children.” Call him crazy, but it was true. He spread his hands and preached to the room with a passionate sincerity, “They’re supposed to take _care_ of them, _teach_ them things, and... be their _support structure.”_

Ainsley glared at the far wall, her expression packed full of emotions-- the most prominent one; a tightly bottled rage.

“They’re supposed to _protect_ their children. From _anything,”_ Martin passed his hand through the air in front of him, his brief sermon coming to a close. “And if they don’t, then….” he tilted his head and shrugged, “Well, what good are they?”

At the end of it all, he looked over to Ainsley to gauge her reaction.

Ainsley’s lip was quivering. She continued to shake her head as she drew her angry glare to the floor. She hated hearing all that from him. It was unbelievably hypocritical. 

“ _Yes,_ you’re right,” she glowered quietly. That was what he wanted to hear, wasn't it? With a series of hard-hammered nods, she looked at him, her eyes sparkling with tears. “You’re right.” Her voice raised as she gave him a piece of her tormented mind, “A parent _is_ supposed to do all of that. But how _can_ they, when they’re in _prison_ for _homicide_ for _TWENTY YEARS?!”_

Dr. Whitly didn’t even blink as she fearlessly screamed at him. But he did look very, very sorry. “Well... that’s the problem, dear. They _can’t.”_

Ainsley soaked in the pathetic sight of him as he looked up at her with a heavy shame and a heavier regret in his eyes. Perhaps even a deep, underlying apology. 

She _almost_ believed it. But she knew better. Ainsley turned away as a lump rose in her throat. 

While his daughter's attention was diverted, The Surgeon glanced to the open door. Malcolm sure was taking a _while_ to do whatever he was doing out there. Perhaps he’d become distracted by all the bodies strewn about the hospital. They were undoubtedly laid out like a trail of Froot Loops for a boy to follow-- though they’d lead him in the wrong direction. His target was _here._ Martin had stalled for more than enough time for Malcolm to realize that, and he was getting _bored._

“Next question!” Dr. Whitly announced cheerfully. He shifted in his seat to rest his elbows on his knees and lean forward, once again invested in the interview. “How many people tried to stop you out there, Tevin?”

Tevin’s eyes were red as if he’d been crying, but no tears had left his eyes and his breathing was as erratic as it always was. He crawled out of his dark thoughts only to give Dr. Whitly a blank look.

“In the hospital, just now,” Dr. Whitly elaborated, gesturing to the open door. When Tevin still struggled to concentrate, Martin cut to the chase, desiring a quick answer. “Did you happen to see a young man?” he asked, describing, “Brown hair, suit and tie, with a camera?”

Ainsley stared at Tevin with bated breath, also wondering where her brother was.

Tevin began to nod. “Yes. Yes!” His face scrunched with anger as he recalled the young man.

Martin’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What happened, Tevin?”

“He broke it!” Tevin hissed, then snarled, “HE BROKE THE CAMERA!”

Martin did not flinch, only emphasizing with a gentle point, “So what did _you_ do?”

“I broke _him,”_ Tevin seethed.

Martin raised his eyebrows and tucked his chin, asking with a measure of alarm, “Didja _kill_ him?”

“I BROKE him!” Tevin’s beet red face resembled a boiling kettle.

Ainsley struggled to breathe. Malcolm and Tevin hadn’t simply passed each other like ships in the night. They’d faced each other, and Malcolm had lost.

Martin released an extended breath through his lips, trying to remain calm. “Ains, call your brother,” he requested, glancing down to his hands. He could feel the nerves within them yearning to quake.

“Oh my God,” Ainsley had already drawn out her phone. She tapped hurriedly on Malcolm’s saved number.

With a stretch and flex of his fingers, Martin effectively silenced their trembling. It was an exercise of control that he’d mastered long ago. One was required to have a steady hand at all times when they were a surgeon.

“He _broke_ it! He broke the camera!” Tevin gripped his knife so tightly, it could have snapped under his thumb.

Martin sat up straight in his chair and rubbed his hands down his thighs with another large sigh. “Ohhhhh, I _sincerely_ hope you didn’t do any _extensive_ damage.”

“I _cut_ him!” Reminiscent hatred poured out of Tevin as he stared at the older man. The inmate slashed his weapon through the empty space in front of him to enthusiastically demonstrate, “Like _this!”_

Martin pressed his teeth together, but he was not able to craft any sort of smile anymore. _“Where_ did you cut him?” he growled tightly. His eyes drilled into Tevin’s.

Ainsley walked in circles with the phone to her ear, repeating, “Please pick up, please pick up,” as she gravitated back to the dark corner where the cot was.

Tevin continued to spew and babble about unhelpful things, not about the details they needed to know. The details _Martin_ needed to know. Over his shoulder, he eyed Ainsley as she paced. Tevin’s tumbling voice seemed to fade out of the room as the two Whitlys waited for the third to answer his phone. Every electronic ring droned on for an eternity. Ainsley closed her eyes as they beaded with tears again, holding her free hand to her mouth. Martin kept his gaze pinned on her-- and on the cell phone that was pressed against her head.

The ringing stopped. “Malcolm?!” Ainsley cried.

It was then that Tevin registered the fact that neither of them were paying attention to him. “Hey, what’s she doin’?” he barked. “This is about _me!_ This is _my_ innerview!” he whined, demanding the return of their attention.

Ainsley heard her brother’s voice, and rushed to ask, “Malcolm, what happened? Where are you?”

Tevin continued to vie for her focus by howling, “Ainsley! _Innerview me!”_

Martin called above the other inmate’s voice, “What’s he saying, Ains?”

The reporter froze. She removed the phone from her ear and looked at the screen in disbelief. “It was voicemail,” Ainsley whispered. The phone felt as heavy as a cinder block in her hand. Malcolm had never picked up. She’d only heard his pre-recorded greeting asking her to leave a message. The woman felt an anvil drop in her gut, afraid that Malcolm’s failure to answer meant the worst.

Martin ran a palm down his bearded face, rubbing away every sentiment of peace from it. He balled his hand into a tight fist in front of his lips before closing his eyes and withdrawing to a deeper place. His other hand hung limply beside his chair.

Tevin rose to his feet, roaring, “INNERVIEW ME!”

The reporter’s hands trembled as she held her phone to her chest, turning her wide-eyed gaze to her father. “Dad, what are we gonna do?”

Martin didn’t give her an answer. He remained perfectly still.

She could only hope that he was thinking of a plan. Something crafty, something that would fix this. But it was entirely possible that he was simply processing what he’d learned and accepting what he’d lost.

Or perhaps he was waiting.

“AINSLEY!” Tevin’s rage seared into her like how the sun’s heat seared into an ant when amplified by a magnifying glass.

She didn’t notice, instead staring at her dormant father who’d appeared to have shut down or given up.

 _“Dad!?”_ She wailed, begging him to move, to do _something_ , to tell her everything was going to be alright, and to make her believe it. He was in charge of this. He was in control of this. He couldn’t let go of his control _now._ He couldn’t stop being a clever bastard _now._ She _needed_ him. _Malcolm_ needed him.

With a vengeful rage and his knife raised, Tevin charged at her. _“INNERVIEW MEEEE!”_

Ainsley leapt as far back into her corner as possible-- until her legs hit the edge of the cot. She fell onto it and shrieked, holding her limbs up to block his advance and turning her face into her shoulder. Every inch of her skin tingled in preparation to feel the pain of a knife sinking somewhere into her body, tearing through her flesh, scraping against her bone.

But that didn’t happen.

Instead, The Surgeon’s tether snapped taut just in time for Tevin to trip over it and slam face-down onto the rug. Martin’s hand was no longer hanging motionless beside his chair. None of him was motionless. He was a complete blur.

He bore a knee down on Tevin’s back and wound the slack of his cable around the man’s neck and arm like a sailor fastening a rope on a sailboat, or a cowboy tying calves’ legs in a rodeo competition where both speed and accuracy were not only vital, but also competitively scored.

Dr. Whitly would have easily won first prize.

The Surgeon gave a firm yank of the tether, cutting off both Tevin’s airway and the circulation in his arm. Tevin was remarkably quiet as he choked. Granted, he sputtered what little he could sputter, but the majority of what came out of his blowfish face were dribbles of saliva. With a grimace of effort, Martin wound the last length of his cable around his own arm. He leaned back and pulled as hard as he could on it to maintain the pressure of the snare. The line sank in the blue flesh of Tevin’s neck.

The knife dropped. Martin snatched it from the floor with his free hand.

Ainsley had barely lowered her arms away from her face when her father finally told her what to do. Rather, what not to do.

“Don't look,” he ordered.

Ainsley covered her face again and balled herself up against the wall, only catching a glimpse of a sweep of his arm, and a glint of silver.

It was very fortunate that that was all she saw. It was very fortunate that she didn’t see her father plunge the kitchen knife into Tevin’s eye socket, burying it beyond where the metal met the handle. It was very fortunate that she didn’t see him twist his wrist and angle the blade in a circular motion as if he were scraping the inner walls of a pumpkin to prime it for jack-o-lantern carving. It was very fortunate that she did not see her father stir the man's underdeveloped brain into a soup.

But, _unfortunately,_ she heard it. She heard the _shulk_ of steel sinking into meat, the pit-pattering of blood being spilt onto the rug like heavy rain falling from a rooftop gutter. She heard Tevin’s three unrestrained limbs spasm against the floor. She heard a wet pop and a slimy squish and a sharp spurt.

It was almost more horrifying to imagine what was making those sounds. Ainsley quivered with mouth agape, hyperventilating and gasping as if she had just surfaced from a near-drowning. She lamented into her hands, her eyes firmly sealed shut as he curled against her knees. The wiry mattress of the uncomfortable cot gave her no consolation, and if the pillow that belonged to it hadn’t currently been under Jin’s head, she would have used it as a shield to barricade her from the fresh crime scene that lied only yards away.

Blood pooled onto the rug, saturating it like a sponge. Tevin’s eye socket had transformed into the round opening of a manhole, overflowing with the aftermath of a frothing, dark, scarlet storm.

The Surgeon unwound his tether from the corpse, exhaling as if he'd completed a cathartic session of yoga-- the kind where a physically demanding workout was involved. Something akin to peace returned to him.

“Well. That takes care of that.” As he gently laid Tevin’s head down on the floor, he turned the man’s gutted face away from Ainsley. He knew she was in far too much shock to appreciate the gesture, but he did her the courtesy anyway.

Martin caught his breath with another sigh and rested his hands on his legs. After looking over the mess he’d made, he briefly pouted at the stains on his nice cardigan. Reminding himself to act more sensitive in regards to her terror, he winced with empathy, “I’m sorry you had to be here for that.”

Ainsley didn’t dare to look in his direction. She sobbed to herself on the cot, slowly turning to face the corner of the cold red brick wall. She cried thoroughly, nearly out of prayers. She used her last ones to wish this nightmare would end.

Martin looked down at Tevin’s corpse again and hollowly admired his handiwork. _Twenty years._ What a shame it had to happen in these circumstances.

The Surgeon reached forward to claim his reward.

It felt as if an eternity passed, but in reality, it only took a few seconds before the soft rustle of a chain and a _click_ caused Ainsley to cease her crying with a fearful hiccup. Her own blood pounded in her ears, and her throat shriveled dry.

“I better go see what he’s done to your brother.”

Ainsley opened her eyes and stared at the wall in front of her face, too terrified to turn around and see what she believed she just heard-- which was almost more frightening than the murder she’d just heard.

“You’re welcome to tag along, if you’d like,” Martin kindly offered. He tilted his head to ease another friendly invitation, “I might need your _help.”_

She sucked in a few sporadic breaths through her lips. Her spine tingled with the same electricity he’d given her when he’d returned her camera. She anticipated the approach of his presence and the return of his touch with far more terror than she had anticipated Tevin’s attack. The sounds of his slippers scuffing lightly against the ground echoed in her ears.

But The Surgeon’s voice did not waft closer. “I suppose it _would_ be better if you stayed here, in case your... _beau_ wakes up.” He was near Jin; looking down at him as he stepped over his body like it was a puddle of mud-- and therefore also stepping over the red line.

“He’ll need to take very shallow, careful breaths until he reaches the hospital.”

Ainsley’s own breaths were very shallow and careful. They condensed into vapor droplets against the brick wall in front of her nose. She was not consoled by the fact that The Surgeon was walking away from her.

“You just sit tight, dear. Tevin won’t cause you any more trouble.”

That was his goodbye. He was _leaving._

She expected to hear one more phrase from him before he vanished. But nothing else came.

He didn’t tell her that everything was going to be alright.

That was because everything _wasn't_ going to be alright. Nothing could be alright when Malcolm was gone. Nothing could be alright when there was _another_ monster on the loose in Claremont Psychiatric Hospital.


	4. Chapter 4

Ainsley hesitantly turned to look toward the open cell door. Jin lay in front of it, his chest slightly rising and falling. The coffee pot beside him was nearly full of crimson liquid. She continued to scan the room with great caution, inch by inch, afraid to take in the horrific sight that awaited her. She saw the blood-saturated rug before she saw Tevin’s corpse-- his head bent away from her. It was terrible to look at, but it could have been much worse.

Also on the ground; a white leather belt with an opened padlock and an abandoned cable.

The Surgeon had vanished like a phantom.

Ainsley turned to rest her forehead against the brick wall as a whimper warped her face. Guttural sobs escaped her while she scolded herself. She shouldn't have told Malcolm to leave. She should have stopped filming, like he’d told her to. She shouldn’t have pursued this interview at all. If only she’d known this would happen. If only she’d listened to her mother.

 _“Oh God,”_ Ainsley wailed, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking herself. Her lungs heaved with the effort of purging her pent-up emotions, which took the form of mournful, angry, and distraught sounds. She’d tried so hard to be brave and strong, but she couldn’t be those things anymore.

There was a folded blanket at the foot of the cot. It was dark grey with small flecks of white woven in its threads. She reached out to grab the item and then pressed the fabric over her mouth to lament into its fibers. The blanket was thick between her fingers and soft against her lips. The aged cotton had a worn yet fluffy texture. She tucked it around her shoulders and held it against her face, hiding herself from the nightmarish world as best she could.

Her breathing began to settle, save for the occasional hiccup of sorrow. Somehow, that blanket calmed her. But it wasn’t through touch. It was through scent. The blanket's scent reminded her of something she had when she was young. Something very dear to her, very long ago. She began to practically huff the fabric, focusing her thoughts on identifying its familiar but long-forgotten smell. Ainsley couldn’t get enough of it.

The scent practically sedated her, as if the blanket were perfumed with a light mist of chloroform. Truthfully, the blanket wasn't soaked in anything-- except perhaps some fire retardant, as prison blankets often were. But she was soothed with each inhalation, until the only thing that ached in her chest and welled in her eyes was emotion, not terror.

The fibers of that blanket seemed to filter out all the bad smells, images, and experiences in the room around her, acting as a breathing mask to block out any mental pollution. She pressed it tighter over her face, feeling a slight sense of suffocation as she did so. It wasn't the unforgiving sense of suffocation like that which a plastic bag provided. Rather, it was a gentle one; harmful only if it was held against her mouth for too long.

The only thing that passed through her self-made mask was that special, faint, familiar scent. It brought her apparitions of the past and unlocked memories she thought she’d forgotten. Memories she thought she had been too young to ever remember.

_‘Wherrre’s Ainnnsley?’_

But she remembered them now.

* * *

As the blanket was removed from her face, her breath released in a sharp cry of childish laughter.

Her father smiled down at her as he sat on the edge of her pink bed. _“There_ she is!”

The four-year-old’s giggles were muffled by the blanket as he pressed it down over her face again. She squirmed beneath it, but only with amusement. A struggle of delight.

“Wherrre’s Ainnnsley?”

She grinned in the darkness of her tight blanket, playing along and becoming motionless. It was hard to breathe under the thick covering, but that was part of the game. She was supposed to hide in his trap for as long as she could, even if it was a little uncomfortable. He always freed her before her lungs began to ache.

Too much. 

Even so, her trust never faltered.

 _“There_ she is!”

The girl gasped with another burst of laughter as the blanket was whisked away. “Daddy, stop!” she giggled, out of breath. Turning to her side, she rejected the next round.

With a smirk, he conceded and tucked the blanket around her tiny shoulders. Reaching for the bookshelf beside her bed, he asked, “Which story would you like to hear tonight?”

“That one!” Her little arm flew out to point at the picture book of her choosing.

“That one? But we read that one last night.”

Her arm receded back under the covers as he fetched the story. “It’s my favorite!”

“Oh, alright,” he yielded. “If it’s your favorite.”

She rolled to lie on her back again, looking up at him as he opened the picture book for her to see. He read the story in a very energetic and theatrical manner, performing different voices for each of the characters. She had memorized some of the parts, and enthusiastically called out her lines when it was her turn. 

“Very good,” he praised in a colorful, warm tone.

Picture books, in Ainsley’s wee opinion, were far too short. Her spirits always fell when they were over. But her father knew how to fix that. 

“Now, go….” The man booped her nose with his finger. “To sleep.” He may as well have pressed a giggle button. Evidently, the sleep button was broken.

The child’s baby teeth shone as her face illuminated with the twinkling light of a thousand stars. “Okay, daddy.”

Another smile shaped his dark beard, and he rose from the bed. She stopped him from leaving by asking a question. “How come Malcolm gets to stay up late?”

He turned to her again, slipping his hands into his pockets. “Well, he’s older than you, sweetheart.”

She fingered the edge of her blanket. “Can I stay up late when I’m older?”

“Perhaps,” he murmured with affectionate humor. “So long as your mother allows it.”

She blinked at him with large, young, hazel eyes. “And then can I help you with work, like Malcolm?”

He hesitated, finally answering, “We’ll see.” Returning to the edge of the bed, he towered over her and tilted his head with a wince. “I don’t think it’s something you would enjoy, sweetheart.” He reached for one of her many stuffed animals and tucked the plush creature close to her.

She accepted it with a tight embrace, enjoying the comfort of its soft texture against her cheek.

“It’s more of a guy thing.”

“Like camping?” she muttered.

“Yes, like camping.”

She sighed, then whined, _“I_ wanna go camping with you.”

“Maybe when you’re older, dear,” he nodded, giving her _the look._ The look that told her that she’d asked enough questions for tonight. She pouted, but as he tucked a second stuffed animal against her side, she accepted it as a token of their truce. 

His fingers brushed a lock of blonde hair away from her eyes. “Go to sleep,” he murmured, pressing his hand against her forehead. His touch was steady and warm, and it erased her feelings of being left out. “Your brother is waiting for me,” he informed her as he left.

There was only so much of dad to go around.

“Goodnight, daddy,” she smiled.

He lingered in the doorway to her bedroom, silhouetted from behind via the lamp in the hall. “Goodnight, sweetheart,” he purred in the darkness.

She recruited one last tactic to stall his departure. With a flourish of her small hand, she blew him a great big kiss. The girl’s arm swept through the air like she was scattering rose petals as far as humanly possible.

Across the room, he returned the kiss with a delicate extension of his forearm, moving his fingers away from his bearded lips like he was conveying a tender ‘thank you’ in sign language.

He closed her door with a quiet _click._

Ainsley remained alone on the bed-- both then and now-- completely unaware of what her father and Malcolm were doing without her.

* * *

The angry electronic _beep, beep, beep’s_ and emergency _whooooop’s_ of Claremont’s sirens echoed through the ebbing halls. They were fairly loud, but Malcolm stopped hearing them long ago. Instead, he only heard...

_‘Sure, that was your knife.’_

Malcolm’s hand slammed against the thin silver handle of a medical cabinet, but it did not twist under his weighted pull. It was locked. “No, no, dammit!” The criminal profiler jostled it, but to no avail. He hit the metal cabinet with a pound of his fist and a loud cry of, “NO!” 

His suit jacket was torn and the white shirt underneath it was torn too-- though much more noticeably due to the spots of red that painted it.

_“Why else would a boy want a knife? To whittle a piece of wood. Scale a fish.”_

He held onto the top of the cabinet with one arm, leaning his weight upon it to take some pressure off his injured leg. His necktie was tightened around his upper thigh as a makeshift tourniquet. “Fuck…” he exhaled, pressing his forehead into his wrist.

_“People who suffer from our… sickness… have a tendency to… find others, who suffer from it too.”_

How ironic that the only things properly locked down in the psychiatric hospital were the goddamned medical cabinets. “Fuck!” Malcolm yelled, abusing the cabinet with another punch of his fist-- this one far less powerful than the last. 

_“Sometimes to enable, or uh… admire. In this case… I was, um… a mentor. Of sorts.”_

Malcolm caught his breath with a pained wince and tried to find a way to open the cabinet. He had to. He had no other options. 

His lungs worked overtime to fuel his body with oxygen, but he suffered no wounds similar to that of Jin’s. Tevin had of course aimed for his chest, but by some act of God, the blade had only penetrated through the ballistic case of his cell phone in his breast pocket. Malcolm almost never put his phone in his breast pocket. What were the odds?

_“Perhaps we’d better… table this, for now.”_

Even with the extraordinary amount of luck God bestowed upon him, Malcolm was not in good shape. He’d lost a lot of blood, and he had no way to reach help-- both electronically and physically. The criminal profiler dug his nails at the pins of the hinges. It was no use. He tried to peel away a corner of the metal door. It didn’t warp. He turned to cast his gaze around the vacant hall, searching for anything he could use to hit the padlock (which was agonizingly small, but just strong enough that it was annoying) to try and break it off.

Being already panicked, Malcolm didn’t react to the sight of his father.

_‘What’s with the long face? Don’t be so worried.’_

The Surgeon was standing at one end of the hall. Dark hair, wide grin, wearing a plaid shirt and a rain jacket. 

_‘We’re gonna have a guys’ weekend.’_

Malcolm looked past the apparition. Behind it, there was the body of a guard lying on the ground. The profiler took a preparatory breath and then pushed off from the medical cabinet to hobble down the hall. Blood trailed along the wall as he ran his hand across it for support.

The Surgeon’s smile brightened. _‘Sound fun?’_

“It’s not real,” Malcolm whispered as he concentrated on moving toward the guard’s body. It felt like football fields away, and though the memory of his father stood in his path, Malcolm forced himself to keep moving towards it anyway. “Go away. Go away,” he willed. The image of his father finally vanished after a few firm blinks of his strained eyes. His path was now clear, yet still endless. After limping down the hall for an eternity, he gasped in pain as he fell to his knee beside the guard’s corpse.

The memories continued to surface.

_‘Malcolm, you haven’t finished your dinner.’_

The phantoms continued to speak.

_‘Malcolm, where did you go?’_

His father’s voice floated through his memory with a sing-song tone to it, as if playing hide and seek with him. _‘Malllllcolm….’_

The profiler ignored it. He searched the guard’s body for a key. After looking in every pocket, he struggled to turn the man over to search in his other pockets. All the while, he suffered through the echoes of his father’s calm voice. 

_‘Malcolm? Wait for me, son.’_ He heard his father call his name with a humble curiosity, innocently wondering, _‘Malcolm, what are you doing?’_

Condescending, humored, and endearing chuckles rang through the hospital, doing an impressive job of drowning out the sirens.

_‘You know you’re not supposed to be down here. This is daddy’s special room.’_

The profiler clenched his jaw, desperately searching through the clothes of the guard’s cold, heavy, bloody corpse. He exhaled with relief when he felt it. A key. A tiny one. One that would fit the padlock on the medical cabinet. Struggling to his feet, he grimaced and made his way back through the lengthy hall. His father stood waiting for him, blocking his pathway again. He was wearing his red sweater and holding a black box. _‘Would you like to see what I’ve been working on?’_

Malcolm ignored him. Each limp sent agony through his leg and gut. As his father angled the box for him to see inside it, the profiler turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut. He kept limping forward while blind.

_‘Those are human teeth. Thirty two, in all. Aren’t they fascinating?’_

Malcolm felt along the wall as he kept his head down and his eyes tightly closed. He prayed that he’d reach the cabinet quickly.

_‘Would you like to touch one? Go ahead, son. It’s alright. They don’t bite. Not anymore.’_

His father’s chuckle deafened him.

“Shut up,” Malcolm hissed, “Shut up.” His hand trembled violently against the wall and his knees threatened to give out underneath him. He couldn’t feel his right foot. Rather, all he could feel of it was the tingle of a thousand pins and needles.

_‘Don’t tell your mother, alright? Not your sister, either. This will be just between us.’_

_‘Okay dad.’_

_“_ Shut up!” Malcolm flinched as his hand crashed against the medical cabinet. His eyes blinked open and his hands shook as he hurried to jam the key into the padlock. “Come on, come on, come on.” But it didn’t fit. “No, _no!”_

_‘Now, go back to bed, son.’_

_‘Daddy, where did you get those teeth?’_

_‘From work.’_ His father’s voice continued to ricochet like slow, soft bullets in his head. Bullets that crept through his brain like glaciers. Bullets that were actually sharp daggers, sinking deeper and deeper into his psyche. _'_ _I get a lot of interesting things from work. I can show you something else tomorrow night, if you’d like.’_

“No.” The profiler jostled the cabinet door, yanked on the padlock, and tried the key again. And again.

_‘Goodnight, Malcolm.’_

_‘Goodnight, dad.’_

The world was spinning. Malcolm felt dizzy. He felt nauseous. His fingers trembled so much that he couldn’t even hold the key near the padlock anymore. Everything he saw was a blur.

The profiler’s eyes began to drift closed. The key, his hand, his whole body, it all felt heavy. Too heavy to hold up anymore. 

_‘Malcolm?’_

His vision spun. His grip slipped from the top of the cabinet. He plummeted.

_‘Malcolm!’_

But he didn’t hit the floor. Not immediately. Not hard. Someone caught him first, and then eased him down onto it while murmuring, “It’s alright.” That someone slid their hand out from behind his head and arranged him gently on his back. “Lie still.”

The floor was hard and cold, but inviting all the same. Malcolm’s body wanted to fall asleep on it, though internally he screamed in protest, knowing what nightmares would come. He vaguely assumed that ‘someone’ was a guard, or a SWAT officer. It was about time they’d arrived. He struggled to remain conscious, muttering, “The inmate… Tevin, he’s…”

“Don’t worry about him, I took care of it.”

‘Someone’ spread apart the young man’s suit jacket, took his skewered phone out of his pocket, and popped open his shirt. Malcolm quickly pieced together that ‘someone’ wasn't an officer. Instead, they were obviously a medic, which was even better. The profiler lightly winced as each of the wounds on his chest and arms were thoroughly examined. 

“Good, good, those aren’t too deep.” 

The pain tugged Malcolm back into the realm of consciousness, particularly when the examination moved to his leg. 

“Ooh, but this… this doesn’t look--”

At that point, the sensation of pain lashed through Malcolm like a whip. _“AGH!”_ he cried, instinctively reaching down to protect his wound. His vision cleared with the pain and he grit his teeth as he lifted his head-- only to see another hallucination of his father.

“I know, son, I know. Let me see it,” The Surgeon moved Malcolm’s hands and then pried open the wound again.

That wasn't a hallucination. 

That _was_ his father, wearing his Claremont uniform and beige cardigan-- both of which were soiled with blood. Malcolm sucked in a breath like a black hole, flailing wildly and fighting away from him. His body combusted with a new strength, one that was supplied by his survival instincts, terror, and a second wave of adrenaline.

Dr. Whitly flinched back and lifted his arms to block his son’s sudden thrashing, narrowly avoiding a broken nose. “Malcolm, stop!” He battled with his son’s kicks for a brief moment, trying to regain control of him. “ _Stop!”_

_“LET GO!”_ The profiler freed himself and crawled away. Martin lashed out like a viper to try and snatch the young man’s ankle, but he wasn’t quick enough. Malcolm bumped against the wall. No matter how hard he pushed against the brick, he couldn’t retreat any further. He’d only succeeded in placing a few feet of distance between them. It was nowhere near enough. 

“What are you doing here!?” he gasped, pressing his back to the wall with his good leg raised, ready to execute another violent kick if he needed to. 

Dr. Whitly remained kneeling in place, scowling over at this son with an astonished and deeply offended, “Saving your _life!_ Now get back here and let me look at you.”

Malcolm continued to demand questions between his petrified gasps. “How did you get out!? Where’s your guard!?”

Dr. Whitly’s hands floated in front of him. He tried to remain patient, sighing, “It’s a _long_ story, and we don’t have time--”

“Tevin let you out...” Malcolm realized, his terror transitioning into anger. This was his own fault. If he would have stopped Tevin, then this would have never happened.

Dr. Whitly made a face, admitting, “Well... _technically,_ yes, but--” While he spoke, his eyes darted over Malcolm’s tensed body. Malcolm didn’t believe that the purpose of that look was to analyze his wounds from afar. He believed that it was because the man was looking for an opportunity to grab him.

Malcolm’s anger grew. “Where’s Ainsley?” he shouted. “What did you do to her!?”

Dr. Whitly scoffed and rolled his head. _“Nothing,_ she’s _fine._ ” Well, perhaps not exactly fine. “She’s probably puking in my toilet, to be honest. Now let me look at that leg,” he wagged a finger at his son and beckoned him over. 

“No,” the profiler seethed.

The Surgeon warned, “Malcolm.”

They stared at each other, but neither one moved. Yet.

“If he cut your femoral artery, then you’re--”

Malcolm interrupted him before he could craft up some bullshit argument. “Then I’d already be dead.” He’d paid attention in anatomy class. Both in school and at home.

Dr. Whitly glared at him, his patience waning. “I can’t _know_ what he cut, if I can’t _look_ at it.”

The profiler glared back. “I’m _fine,_ you’re just trying to--”

Now Dr. Whitly interrupted him, and he was upset. _“What?_ I’m trying to _what,_ Malcolm? What _possibly_ do I have to gain by being here right now? What ‘ _evil’_ thing am I doing?”

“You know exactly what you’re doing,” Malcolm accused with disgust.

Dr. Whitly took a breath, reset himself, then smiled. “Yes. You’re right. I do,” he nodded. After a beat, his smile dropped and he snapped, “I’m a _surgeon._ Of _course_ I know what I’m doing. I know that a wound _that_ deep can cause severe hemorrhaging and _irreparable_ tissue damage--” his rant continued as he stretched his arm forward to point at Malcolm’s leg, “--and that tourniquet is _not_ tight enough! _Look_ , you’re still _bleeding!”_

Malcolm didn’t look down. He knew better. That would have been exactly what Dr. Whitly wanted him to do. That would have been his father’s opportunity to lunge for him. Malcolm didn’t allow him to have it. He remained curled up against the wall and ready to kick out again with his good leg.

Dr. Whitly exhaled a heated sigh before he urged, “Let me _help you.”_

Malcolm shouted with a burst of anger, “Stay the _fuck_ away from me!”

“God _DAMMIT_ Malcolm, _we don’t have time for this!”_ Dr. Whitly roared, bursting to his feet.

Malcolm tensed, ready to put up one hell of a fight against the devil himself. But his father took a step back, not forward. Dr. Whitly fished Mr. David’s special key out of his cardigan pocket and stormed in front of the medical cabinet. With a _click,_ the door swung wide open. The Surgeon began looting it, all the while lecturing tersely, “How much blood did you lose before you fastened that silly little necktie around your thigh, Malcolm? Did you keep _track?”_

Malcolm ignored his condescending lecture. While his father was occupied, the profiler carefully shifted the way he sat and revealed his own special item from his pocket.

“A quarter of a liter? Half? An _entire_ liter? You only have about _four_ in your body.” Dr. Whitly dug through the cabinet as he eyed what it had to offer, making rapid calculations and tucking each item between his arm and his chest. “How long ago were you _cut,_ Malcolm? Five minutes? Seven? _Ten?_ Think hard. It matters.” Dr. Whitly had gathered everything he needed-- or at least had what he could make do with. “Now, you are going to _let me treat you,_ or _God_ help me, I’m gonna--” he shut the cabinet door with a loud _slam_ and turned back to his son.

Then Martin froze. His son was aiming Mr. David’s taser up at him.

The Surgeon’s determination deflated. He should have searched the boy more thoroughly.

Dr. Whitly cautioned, _“Malcolm.”_ He was trying very, very hard to stay calm. “Put. The gun. _Down.”_

Malcolm did not.

The corner of the profiler’s mouth began to twitch in a smile. He whimpered to himself as he held the taser up with both hands. A few strands of his brown hair had fallen in front of his forehead, and he had broken into a cold sweat. Before long, he was grinning. His whimpers morphed into laughter that shook his shoulders. Looking miserable and elated all at once, he involuntarily donned a hint of mania. He was so tired, and so dizzy, and he had indeed lost a lot of blood. But this one single moment of having power over his father was too satisfying not to revel in.

Every other measure for maintaining control over the serial killer had failed. The painted red line, the tether, the pair of handcuffs, the locked cell. But that single-shot taser prevailed. Malcolm was very grateful that he hadn’t wasted it on Tevin. This was a far better use for it.

Dr. Whitly did _not_ think this situation was funny. “If you _shoot_ me, I cannot _help_ you,” he growled through his teeth.

“I don’t need your help,” Malcolm snickered. “All I needed was that cabinet unlocked.” The profiler grinned, ordering, “Toss me the tourniquet.”

Dr. Whitly was too angry with him to be proud of him. With a hateful glare, he gently lobbed the tourniquet at him. Malcolm didn't flinch as it landed in his lap. He held the taser steady with one hand, carefully using his other one, along with his teeth, to undo the Velcro strap and open it. It wasn't the easiest thing to put on with one hand, but he slowly managed it. He remained fully focused on his aim the whole time, knowing his father would take any chance to dive forward and wrestle the weapon out of his control.

To make the most of their short time together before the SWAT team came, Malcolm picked up where they’d left off in their last conversation. “Paul Lazar. When you knew him, what name did he go by?” 

Dr. Whitly watched him fumble with his task, encouraging darkly, “I would focus on your tourniquet, son.”

“Answer the question,” the profiler commanded.

“I will give you answers _another time,_ Malcolm,” Dr. Whitly nodded, giving him _the look._ The look that told him that he’d asked enough questions for today.

“No,” Malcolm smirked though a sense of nausea that was beginning to return to him. His fingers worked slowly as he looped the loose strap just underneath where his necktie was secured around his thigh. “I need them _now.”_

He was making painfully slow progress with the medical device, and it was agonizing for Dr. Whitly to watch. “They’re no use to you if you're _dead,_ Malcolm.” He pointed at his leg as if it was a dinner plate full of uneaten vegetables. “Finish your tourniquet!”

The profiler matched the Velcro and hovered his hand at the stick, but he did not twist it. He needed an answer first. “Where did you meet him?” he asked, blackmailing his father with his own life.

 _“Malcolm!”_ Dr. Whitly seethed. His free hand clenched at his side, but he couldn’t hide its trembling.

Malcolm noticed, but did not comment on it. He only smiled. “Answer me, and I’ll finish.”

His father huffed and gave in. _“St. Edwards.”_

Malcolm rewarded him by twisting the stick, but only once. He asked another question. “Who was he?”

Dr. Whitly was livid, but he was rooted where he stood by the threat of that taser. “Finish. Your tourniquet.” That was his last warning.

“What was his name?”

 _“I SAID FINISH--”_ Martin Whitly yelled and took a bold step toward his stubborn, foolish, manipulative son.

Malcolm Bright replaced his second hand on the taser and tightened his grip while yelling back at his murderous father with an even greater ferocity, _“WHO WAS THE GIRL IN THE BOX!?”_ The wrath in Malcolm’s voice alone was enough to convince Martin that he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

Dr. Whitly lifted his hands in surrender and halted, clenching his teeth. The medical equipment that had been tucked in his arm clattered to the floor in a symphony of chaos. Taking deep, irregular breaths of anger, The Surgeon lowered his voice and equipped a new demeanor of false calm. “You’re not going to win this game, Malcolm.”

Their gazes seared into each other like branding rods.

“You’re going to pass out,” Dr. Whitly promised, shaking his head. “Any moment, now. By then it'll be too late for me to help you.”

Malcolm took his own deep, irregular breaths-- though they weren’t necessarily ones of anger.

“Do you _want_ to take that chance?” Dr. Whitly inquired. _“I_ don’t.”

Malcolm fought against his dizziness and nausea, refusing the tempting call of sleep.

“How long do you think it’ll take for the ambulance to transport you to the hospital?” Dr. Whitly lectured again, “How long will it take them to prep the OR? What place in line will you be, Malcolm, when they have how many other victims to attend to?” 

Malcolm’s finger slowly tensed over the trigger of his taser-- which was now trembling in his hands’ grip. He wanted to do it. He wanted to shoot him. He didn’t care about his wounds. He didn’t care about whether his father’s concern was genuine or fabricated. He didn’t even care about getting answers anymore. Malcolm just wanted to _shoot him,_ and _watch him fall,_ before he passed out.

“You are in no position to make _demands,_ son.” Dr. Whitly watched him intensely, and roared again, “Now _do as I say_ and _put the gun down!!”_

Then a new voice erupted into the fray.

 _“Malcolm!”_ Ainsley called.


	5. Chapter 5

The halls of the east wing were akin to those of a labyrinth, but in such a sterile place as this, blood was easy to follow. Particularly the blood which had been smudged along the wall by someone’s hand, and that which had formed a trail of dots along the floor. Like Froot Loops for a girl to follow. They led Ainsley straight to her brother.

“Oh my God,” she gasped with tears already budding in her eyes. The reporter’s blonde curls bounced around her shoulders as she ran toward Malcolm. She was so glad to see him alive. All she wanted was to be by his side-- even if it meant that she’d have to run past a serial killer.

Dr. Whitly didn’t look away from his son. Instead, his stern gaze continued to burn into Malcolm’s, painstakingly monitoring his consciousness while remaining deaf to his daughter’s calls and footsteps echoing behind him.

Malcolm’s eyes darted to Ainsley for the smallest fraction of a second, but the criminal profiler kept his focus on the taser’s aim. Unintentionally, she served as another distraction-- another opportunity that Malcolm knew their father was eagerly waiting to take. The profiler’s eyes watered with emotion as he stared at Dr. Whitly, doing his best not to pay any attention to his sister. But he was so, so relieved that she was okay. That Dr. Whitly _hadn’t_ been lying, at least about her.

But Malcolm’s relief dispersed. “Ains, stay back,” he warned urgently. She kept running towards them.

The criminal profiler noticed a few slight changes in his father-- changes that nobody else would have caught. Changes that he noticed only because it was his job to notice them. Because it was his special talent, like a hidden superpower. But most of all, because he knew his father.

Malcolm Bright noticed when Dr. Whitly subtly turned his head and opened the fingers of one hand. Now, the man was listening to his daughter’s approach. Anticipating it. But he continued to stare at his son, and therefore Malcolm could read his eyes. He knew exactly what The Surgeon was planning.

Malcolm called above the clacking of his sister’s heels, “Ains, _stop!”_

She was not stopping, and nearly within range.

The profiler leaned forward to threateningly push the taser closer to his father, sending a clear message about his own plan; that if Dr. Whitly made any move to grab her, he’d receive the punishment of fifty thousand volts piercing straight into his nervous system.

Disappointment flashed through Martin’s peeved glare, but he conceded. The doctor exhaled his tension and lifted his head as if to say, ‘Alright, son. You win this one.’ He moved both of his hands slowly in front of himself, placing them together as if they were chained again. Harmless. Docile. Under control. A faint smile hidden in his beard expressed that the battle may have been won, but the war was not over.

Malcolm did not buy into the display of submission, nor remove his finger from the trigger. He was shaking so much that he was only a butterfly’s breath away from pulling it on accident, not that he’d be remorseful. Ainsley flew straight past The Surgeon, who stood perfectly, obediently still. But Malcolm did not relax. He was no longer holding the taser solely to defend himself. He was also holding it to defend his sister.

The reporter, who had noticed none of her family’s tenuous, telepathic exchange, dropped to her knees at her brother’s side, scattering the fallen medical equipment further across the floor. “Malcolm! Are you okay?” Her hazel eyes darted over him as she took in the sight of his poor physical and mental health. He was certainly not okay.

The laceration on his leg was the most gruesome injury she’d ever seen-- not that she could see much of it. The hospital’s emergency lights were still ebbing between darkness and redness, making Malcolm’s wound appear like either a deep black gash or a deep red gash. 

“Oh, God.” She started to look around for what could help him, gathering a roll of bandages, gauze pads, and some unfamiliar vials of liquid-- one of which had to be pain relief, right? She went to work pressing some gauze inside of the cuts on his exposed chest and arms. She had no clue what the majority of the items surrounding them were. She pulled over a kit bag, hoping to find more gauze and bandages tucked within it, but opened it only to find an array of needles and tubes and more mysterious vials.

Dr. Whitly spoke up, instructing with a fragile calm, “Ainsley, tighten his tourniquet.”

She briefly glanced up at their father, then at Malcolm’s leg. “What? This?” She moved her hand near the orange strap to indicate it.

Malcolm snapped, _“Don’t touch it!”_ His wild eyes were still locked on his father. A deep hatred brewed in the profiler’s pupils. He would not let The Surgeon recruit her for his cause. “It’s fine,” he told his sister crossly. “Don’t.”

“Tighten it, Ainsley,” Dr. Whitly ordered. His voice was soothing, but urgent. “As _tight_ as you can.”

Ainsley was caught between them, and thoroughly confused. Their voices tangled together in rapid succession.

Dr. Whitly pointed at Malcolm’s leg with strained patience, quickly trying to get her up to speed and on board with his life-saving mission. “There is a high chance that his femoral artery is severed. You _need_ to tighten that or he will _die.”_

Ainsley’s breath caught in her throat.

Malcolm struggled to squint through the distortion of his vision. “Don’t listen to him, he’s _lying!”_ His voice quivered with anger and weariness combined.

Dr. Whitly’s tone remained gentle, but rushed. “Sweetheart, all you have to do is twist the stick--”

“Malcolm, what’s he talking about?” Ainsley whispered fearfully.

“--about two more times.”

Malcolm yelled, “Nothing, he’s just trying to--!”

“Is he bleeding, Ainsley?” Dr. Whitly called above his son.

She whirled to look at their father again. “What?” 

“Is he _bleeding,”_ he repeated, pointing eagerly, “Check his wound!”

She checked, touching her trembling fingers to her brother's gouged leg. Malcolm flinched away from her and hissed, _“Don’t!”_

Ainsley’s fingers came away with fresh blood.

“You see?” Martin’s expression was pinched with worry. He murmured to himself, “Oh, that’s not good.”

“Stop it!” Malcolm spat at him, readjusting his grip on the taser in a threatening manner. “Stop talking to her!”

Dr. Whitly did not stop. He continued to point at the tourniquet, explaining to Ainsley quickly, “If that was on tight enough, that wouldn’t happen.”

Ainsley knew he was right. She whirled to her brother with an alarmed and accusational, _“Malcolm!”_

“SHUT UP!” the profiler cried. It was unclear who he was yelling at. He pleaded with his sister, “Don't listen to him, it’s a trick!”

“He is going to _bleed out_ and _die!_ ” Martin declared loudly. “He’s got less than two minutes before he passes out and then it’s _all over,_ Ains.”

There was too much noise, too much yelling and anger and panic and it was all happening too fast for Ainsley to process it. And there was blood. Lots of blood. She stared at her painted fingers, and her brother’s soaked leg. She saw the wound bubble with fluid as he moved.

“ _Tighten it, NOW!”_ her father yelled desperately.

Ainsley was terribly frightened. With rapid, small breaths, she hesitated. Then she lunged for Malcolm’s tourniquet. “No!” Malcolm flinched, but he couldn’t squirm away in time. She grabbed a hold of the tourniquet’s stick and twisted it with all of her might as if she was locking a vault door.

“N- _-AAAUGH!”_ her brother screamed, falling over on one elbow. The taser’s aim faltered and The Surgeon rushed forward. At the same time, Ainsley let go of her brother’s tourniquet and glanced back with a gasp. “STOP!” Malcolm burst, returning his aim as he curled on his side.

Dr. Whitly halted with his hands raised, wincing a subtle ‘dammit’ at the missed chance. He hadn’t expected Malcolm to recover from that kind of pain so quickly.

The reporter’s heart drummed in her chest as she realized she’d nearly made a fatal mistake. That taser was the sole thing keeping a _murderer_ at bay, and he’d certainly almost fooled her into distracting Malcolm from his aim.

 _“Stop,_ just _STAY AWAY!”_ Malcolm demanded hysterically. Again, it was unclear who he was yelling at. His arms were quaking. He struggled to keep the taser steady in his raised hands as he lay on one shoulder. The weapon felt like it weighed forty pounds.

“Here, I got it,” Ainsley carefully reached for the taser. “I got it, Malcolm.” She hovered her hands around his white knuckles, but didn’t attempt to forcibly take it from him. In an apologetic way, she was requesting a second chance. They were a team, and she was going to make up for her mistake.

“It’s alright Malcolm. It’s okay,” she eased. “Let go.”

The profiler struggled to decide to give up control of that taser. His expression clenched with pain. He began to cry as he strained to keep some sort of strength in the heated glare he pinned at his father.

“Don’t let him--” Malcolm whispered.

“I won’t,” Ainsley vowed with a dash of anger. She _meant_ it. She’d witnessed how Dr. Whitly would take any opportunity to lunge forward. She was not going to give him another.

Slowly, Malcolm relinquished the taser.

Ainsley took it with both hands and kept it pinned squarely on its target. Her father. The taser did not tremble in her tight grip. Perched solidly on her knees, she kept her arms straight and her glare severe. But the gun was not the only thing that had been transferred over to her. Dr. Whitly’s gaze was now fixed on his daughter.

Malcolm dropped his arms and gulped in a few waves of oxygen as if he’d been holding his breath underwater. With Ainsley holding the weapon, he was finally able to breathe again. But he _still_ did not relax. He struggled to sit up and immediately fumbled for his tourniquet. It clearly agonized the young man to tighten it.

Ainsley briefly glanced over at him, her concern doubling. “Malcolm?” Their father had been right. Malcolm’s frantic actions admitted it.

Dr. Whitly bitterly murmured, “I hate to be _that guy,_ but, I told you so.”

 _“Shut up,_ ” Malcolm hissed through clenched teeth, grimacing as he folded over himself and put all his strength into twisting the medical device-- which wasn't very much strength at all. Spots danced in the profiler’s vision. He barely managed to execute the final turn, but he failed to secure the stick in the clip. It slipped out of his fingers and spun open, allowing a small surge of blood to surface from his wound. As it did, a new wave of dizziness washed over him.

Ainsley’s gaze was torn between her two family members. Her job was to hold the taser. Her job was to keep The Surgeon where he stood. She had to do her job. But as Malcolm wrestled once more with the device around his thigh, she grew more alarmed. “Malcolm!”

“Keep th’ gun on him,” the profiler sputtered, leaning into his work. It didn’t help. His eyes rolled and his head spun. The pain was not helping him stay awake. He didn’t even notice when he teetered over to lie on his hip and shoulder again.

 _“Malcolm!!”_ Ainsley wailed.

“Sweetheart,” Dr. Whitly’s calm voice interrupted Ainsley’s panic. She looked back at their father with fear on her face.

“If you care at all about your brother, you will let me help him.” The doctor raised his eyebrows, “He’s going to _die_ if I don’t.”

The reporter winced and gripped her taser more tightly. Beside her, Malcolm’s tensed form _finally,_ but involuntarily, began to relax.

The profiler struggled to keep his eyes open-- not that he could see through them very well anyway. He rolled on his back, abandoning his tourniquet entirely. The hard, cold, laminated floor may as well have been a plump, heavenly mattress. _His_ mattress. For a moment, the ceiling of the hallway became the ceiling of his apartment, and he was convinced he was back home, in his bed, where the only thing he had to fear was the unexpected visit of his doting mother.

Dr. Whitly eased his hands in front of himself and took a daring --but small-- step forward. “All I need to do is tie off the artery.”

 _“Don’t. Move,”_ Ainsley seethed through her lips. Her voice shook and her eyes blinked to clear away her tears. She had one job, and she’d promised to do it.

The Surgeon didn’t move. But he continued speaking. Softly. Gently. Urgently. “It’s very simple, and it will take me _ten_ seconds, so long as he holds still-- and it will _save his life.”_

The taser trembled in Ainsley’s hands. Malcolm was now lying completely still beside her. So still, he was corpse-like.

Martin did not look away from his daughter’s hazel eyes. “Let me help him,” he asked, reminding her, “Like I helped Jin.”

 _Jin._ Ainsley felt her heart clench as tears ran down her cheeks. Jin was breathing right now because of him. Jin was _alive_ right now because of him.

Martin’s gaze burrowed into her core as he gave her a slow, encouraging nod that either affirmed her thoughts, or told her, ‘It’s alright.’ 

Her heart clenched again. He appeared very calm, very certain, and very composed. It was a phenomenal act. His performance did the job of consoling her, just a little. But in his eyes, Ainsley could see the truth. She dug her gaze into him just as deeply as he drilled his gaze into her.

The truth was that he was _scared._ She’d never seen him scared. She wondered if anyone ever had. His fear brought another wave of questions into her mind. But strangely, it also consoled her more than anything. Because it was _real._ It was honest, and she _knew_ it was honest. That was all she ever wanted from him. Honesty.

Conflicted emotions flooded her, threatening to drown. Ainsley took a deep breath, trying to stay strong and in control. She feared her own decision, yet ultimately gave him permission to step forward. “Alright,” the reporter whispered in a tight voice, giving him a cautious nod. _“Help him,”_ she growled with a desperate anger.

But she did not lower the taser.

Martin eyed the weapon, but didn’t hesitate. 

The Surgeon rushed forward.

Ainsley’s finger hovered on the trigger and she tracked his movement, maintaining her aim. The minefield of medical supplies around them scattered further as Dr. Whitly swooped in to lunge for the tourniquet, cranking it like a ship’s wheel. Ainsley moved herself to crouch a few feet away, her arms still straightened and ready to fire. 

That taser didn’t even exist to Dr. Whitly anymore. He paid it --and his daughter-- no mind. All that mattered was his work, and it was all he focused on. He secured the tourniquet’s stick after the fourth turn and then ripped open the bloodied slit that had been cut into the fabric of his son’s suit pants. Finally, he grabbed a small flashlight from the floor and clicked it on. The light allowed both of them to fully see the wound. 

Ainsley lost her breath when she saw her brother’s raw muscle and sinew, appearing like slabs of meat swamped in a tomato stew. The image of Tevin slashing his knife through the air flashed in her memory. _‘I cut him. Like_ **_this!’_ **The color drained from her expression, and she nearly dropped the taser.

Dr. Whitly was already shoving gauze deep into the wound like he was forcing the stuffing back into a torn teddy bear. Malcolm surfaced from his sleep enough to struggle, murmuring, “No, no,” as he pushed and clawed at the vulture pecking at his open wound.

“Stop it!” Martin hissed, pinning his son’s leg down with one knee. He flinched to avoid getting scratched in the face and raised an elbow to deflect Malcolm’s next swipe. “Hold him, Ains!”

Ainsley was frozen. She’d had a vague plan to continue doing her job; which was to keep the taser on him and pull the trigger if he did anything malicious. But she realized now that it was no longer a practical plan.

“Hold his arms down!”

She set the taser on the ground and lunged forward to pin her brother’s arms down, leaning her weight on his biceps. “Malcolm, it’s okay,” she whispered, her hair falling in a curtain around her face. “It’s okay. He’s going to help. He’s going to help you.”

Her brother continued to feebly struggle and mumble in a blind, half conscious panic, “No, no!”

She repeated, “It’s okay. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay.” She wished that she could make him believe her. If only she had inherited their father’s natural gift of sounding so goddamn convincing when giving warm reassurances. Ainsley kept trying to comfort Malcolm as he whimpered and slowly receded back into the realm of nightmares. His body twitched and trembled, but soon, he grew still again. 

“It’s okay. It’s….” The reporter sucked in an emotional breath and blinked away some tears. She didn’t need to give him any further consolation. He couldn’t hear her anymore. She brushed some strands of his brown hair away from his forehead and held his dormant face. He looked so peaceful, now. And deathly pale. The woman pressed her fingers to Malcolm’s neck, where a pulse still drummed.

Her blonde curls flew over her shoulder as she whirled to look back at their father. 

Dr. Whitly was busy working, his movements quick and precise. Ainsley noticed he was wearing nitrile gloves now, which were already more red than blue. A syringe full of clear liquid and a half-emptied vial of the same liquid rested beside his knee. He pulled the roll of bloodied gauze out of Malcolm’s wound like it was a magician’s scarf; endless in length. The Surgeon piled it beside him in a mountainous clump as he readied another fresh square of gauze. He spread the laceration open with the fingers of one hand, the flashlight secured between two of them. Using the new gauze to roughly dab inside the wound, the man cleaned it and soaked up the last of the blood. 

“Good news,” he announced with a distracted murmur. Ainsley eagerly listened as he took the syringe and hovered it inside the gash, deeply flushing it with a solution. “It’s not an artery.” He placed the empty syringe on the ground, then glanced around at the minefield of medical supplies. “It’s a vein.” He leaned over to snatch a little white kit, drawing it close to him and opening it to reveal an array of curved needles and special thread. 

“Which means it’s not as bad as I thought.” He picked out his weapon of choice from the small selection and threaded the needle with another tool. “But it still needs to be addressed.” Returning his glance to the array of supplies scattered across the floor, he pointed to a box behind his daughter. “Hand me those.”

Ainsley looked behind her shoulder, then whirled back to him with an exasperated, _“Band-Aids!?”_ Was he fucking joking?

“Just hand ‘em over,” he urgently motioned. She reached behind herself and fetched them. He took the box from her and not only tore it open, but completely apart. Band-Aids spilled onto the floor, but he didn’t need those. He needed the material from their box. As he thoroughly wiped the piece of torn cardboard with an alcohol swab, he nodded towards a pack of popsicle sticks. “Give me two of those, and put on some gloves.”

Put on some gloves? The young lady followed his gaze, but was hesitant to move. She was no nurse. She was no surgeon’s assistant. She had no idea what he was doing, what _she_ needed to do, or what would help Malcolm. She was originally only supposed to hold that taser, keep a close eye on Dr. Whitly, and shoot him if need be. The taser lay useless a few feet away, out of either of their arms’ reach. Evidently, her duties had changed.

“Now, Ainsley,” The Surgeon encouraged gently.

She swallowed and went to retrieve the sticks and a little plastic-encased pair of nitrile gloves. The reporter fumbled as she opened the packages, but moved as fast and accurately as she could. She gave him the two popsicle sticks he requested and then put on her pair of gloves. 

Dr. Whitly wiped the popsicle sticks with an alcohol swab before inserting them into his son’s leg, using them as spreaders to pry open the wound like it was an envelope. With a few adjustments to their angles, he wedged aside the muscles and nerves that obstructed his access to the damaged vein. Once he had them placed the way he needed them, the doctor instructed his daughter in a calm voice, “Hold these. Like this.”

She stared at the popsicle sticks, which were each buried more than halfway into her brother’s body, stretching his wound wide open. 

Dr. Whitly held back a sigh and warned, “Don’t make me repeat myself, Ains.” More compassionately, he said, “If you want me to save your brother, then I need your help. I can’t do this by myself.”

The reporter hesitantly reached forward to place her gloved fingertips over top of his. Yet again, she felt a kind of electricity tingle through her arms at their touch. He let her take the popsicle sticks and applied a brief pressure to her hands to inform her how to hold them. “Good, just like that.” His gloves transferred blood onto hers, and it formed a wet pattern over her knuckles.

Dr. Whitly retrieved the flashlight. “Can you tuck this against your shoulder? Like a phone?” he asked.

She nodded.

He reached forward to hold it for her.

She tilted her head, lifted her shoulder, and pinned the flashlight in the crook of her jaw. As he removed his hand from the light, his glove smudged more blood across the skin of her chin. It was unavoidable, and it sent chills down her spine.

“Now, whatever you do, don’t drop it,” he smirked. “The last thing your brother needs is a flashlight in his leg.”

Ainsley did not think that was funny. Without moving her head, she gave him a look. His smile only broadened.

They both glanced down at the red line between them. Except, it wasn't red anymore. Instead, Malcolm’s wound appeared entirely pale under the light. The tourniquet was doing its job of keeping the appendage's blood supply properly sealed off.

“Perfect,” Dr. Whitly observed. “Let’s get to work, shall we?” He made the proposal as if he was about to prepare a holiday feast. The tissue did somewhat resemble the colorless, uncooked, moist meat of a chicken.

Ainsley vowed to become a vegetarian from this day forward.


	6. Chapter 6

Dr. Whitly picked up the piece of cardboard from the Band-Aid box and bent it in half. After pinching it with a pair of long tweezers, he lowered it into Malcolm’s wound. The flashlight remained firmly tucked between Ainsley’s cheek and her shoulder. She held the popsicle sticks securely in place, pressing against the muscle around them to give Dr. Whitly space to work.

The Surgeon carefully slid the foreign object under a few veins or arteries or nerves or whatever the rubbery tubular things were inside Malcolm’s leg. Ainsley didn't know the difference, but Dr. Whitly did.

“This will serve as backing,” he explained. _“Usually..._ we use hard plastic. But this will suffice.” With a series of gentle prods of the forceps, he made the last adjustments to the cardboard’s placement. “It will protect the rest of the area from the needle when we begin suturing. Don’t want to poke a hole in anything we don’t intend to.”

Ainsley grimaced as she watched him. She didn’t particularly like the way he kept using the word, _‘we.’_ That was because she didn't particularly like how closely-involved she was in this operation, but she had no choice in the matter.

It was more difficult for her to disassociate with this patient than with his last. When Dr. Whitly had helped Jin, it had only been _him_ working, and Ainsley had been able to focus on filming her story. This time, she was unable to achieve any such separation.

Now, Malcolm had been the one profusely bleeding, the one who was on the verge of death, and the one who was being handled like a Thanksgiving dinner. But Ainsley tried to convince herself that this wasn’t a piece of her brother. That this wasn't even a person. That this was only a piece of plain, ordinary meat like that of an animal, but she just couldn’t do it. She couldn’t force herself to be that callous when looking so closely at the insides of a human being. Especially one she loved.

She didn’t know how Dr. Whitly did it. Especially when his patient was his own child. It was both impressive and concerning.

Ainsley tried to focus on _him_ instead of Malcolm’s leg. She watched how Dr. Whitly held the instruments between his fingers. How he manipulated the juicy contents of his domain in such subtle yet efficient ways. How the residual blood danced over the slick surface of his gloves. She studied the pattern in which Dr. Whitly’s hair grew on his forearms, and the way his eyes squinted as he calculated his minute movements.

Her gaze returned downward. When the camera had been in her lap, and when the field monitor had acted as a protective barrier between their gaze, she had stared into his eyes relentlessly. So relentlessly, it was as if she’d been searching for something within them. Humanity. Or truth. Or someone she thought she once knew. Someone who she’d always wondered about. Someone who her mother told her had died a long time ago, or had never existed at all. Someone who might still be alive, deep down beneath all of the darkness and deceit.

She knew that it was foolish of her to search for such things. To search for such a person.

As the reporter watched his hands, she noticed that Dr. Whitly was taking more measures to sterilize Malcolm’s wound than he had taken with Jin’s. This time around, Dr. Whitly was not only getting the job done, but doing it well. Not necessarily with more care, but certainly with more thought. Like crafting a meticulous masterpiece instead of a sloppy finger painting. Still an artist who was passionate about his art, just working with a different medium that held different value. And with much more at stake.

Ainsley waited for a sense of calm to wash over her as it had before. But this time, no such feeling found her. Maybe it was because she wasn't cradling her camera in her arms. Maybe it was because she was close enough to accidentally touch foreheads with a murderer, if she wasn't careful to avoid it. Maybe it was because she was close enough to smell fetid flesh beneath her face. Maybe it was because she couldn’t get past the fact that this raw, gaping wound between them belonged to her beloved _brother,_ who was pounding on death’s door and who was only in this position because--

She whispered, “I should never have told him to leave.”

Dr. Whitly glanced up at her for a moment, but then returned to focus on his work. She thought he wasn't going to say anything, until he told her, “Don’t play that game.”

“Don’t play the ‘should have, would have, could have’ game,” he advised, peering into the wound to place a surgical clamp around the empty vein to hold it in place. “You will always lose.” He flushed the site with clear liquid again. “Take it from me.”

Ainsley carefully lifted her eyes to study his face.

“What matters is what you’re doing _now.”_ He looked up to hold her gaze for a moment, until she broke their eye contact by glancing down.

The reporter thought about his words. She supposed he was right. She couldn’t go back in time and change what she’d done, but she was helping Malcolm _now,_ and that was what mattered. Ainsley dared to wonder if there was an underlying message hidden in her father’s advice. A buried regret about his own past that he was too narcissistic to outright admit to her.

She felt a wave of dizziness wash over her as Dr. Whitly began employing the talon-like needle to poke through the stringy tissue in her brother’s leg. Any remaining color vanished from the young woman’s face. She closed her eyes to block out the gruesome sight of the surgery in front of her.

Dr. Whitly noticed, and murmured kindly, “You don’t have to watch.” He concentrated on the sutures as he tugged and tied them. 

Closing her eyes didn’t do much. She could still hear the subtle sounds of the procedure. The puncture of the needle, the pull of thread, the clink of thin metallic instruments as they touched and scraped together like delicate dining utensils. It made her queasy.

“Deep breaths.”

Ainsley took deep breaths. They didn’t seem to help.

“You can do this, sweetheart.”

She could do this. She could do this. She just had to do what she was told, and everything would be alright. Just like before. Just like when Tevin had…

Ainsley grimaced as more sounds echoed in her ears. The sound of Tevin screaming her name, the sound of the tether snapping taut, and the sound of the knife plunging into the man’s deranged brain. The spurt. The pop. The pitter-patter of blood drizzling onto the rug.

The reporter felt even more sick. She tried to occupy the dark space behind her eyelids with images and memories that comforted her, but it was difficult to find any at the moment. 

“This is the most difficult part, but it won’t take long.”

After swallowing tightly, she asked, “Keep talking to me.” With polite urgency, she added a weary and hoarse whisper of, “Please.” 

His voice was the only thing that distracted her from her nausea. It soothed her better than anything else. He may as well have been a noisemaker, such as the ones that produced the serene sounds of a waterfall, or rain, or static, which were used to lull infants to sleep. An audible medication. A tranquilizing music to her ears.

Martin glanced up at her, surprised by her request. “Ah... alright. What I’m doing here is called an arteriovenous anastomosis _,_ and it’s basically--”

She interrupted him. “Talk to me about something else. Please, anything else. Something... _normal?”_

The Surgeon paused in his work to think. “Normal….” That was a bit of a challenge, for him.

She offered an alternative request, one that would hopefully be less difficult to fulfill. “Something good?”

It didn’t take him long to wrack his brain for that one. As he continued suturing, Dr. Whitly smiled. “Do you remember Little Pig?”

Ainsley slowly opened her eyes to look at him. The lighting surrounding them was fit for the reiteration of a horror story, though that was not at all what he told. He was illuminated from below by the cool glow of the flashlight, and silhouetted from behind by the ebbing red emergency lights of the halls. They glowed and dimmed with a steady pulse. Despite their eerie effect, they calmed her.

“She was your favorite stuffed animal,” he reminisced. “You liked piglets because they were pink.” Dr. Whitly’s gentle gaze remained low as he sewed and snipped. “You went through a phase where you were _obsessed_ with pink. Do you remember?”

After a few moments, she smiled too. “I do.”

He shook his head slightly as he smoothly pulled the thread through a loop. “I thought you’d be infatuated with _horses,_ but--”

“I did go through a horse phase,” she interrupted quietly. A sense of sadness battled with the fondness in her tone. “That was later. I think I was about nine, or ten.”

Her father looked up at her for a moment, and she thought she saw a glimpse of the same emotion in his eyes. “Oh.” He focused on his work again. “Seems I... just missed it, then.”

Ainsley refrained from telling him that he’d missed a lot while he’d been imprisoned. He was already well aware. “What was the other one?” she asked, redirecting the conversation back to that of her childhood toys. “The other animal I had? It was grey.” And it always accompanied Little Pig.

His face lit up, but not due to the reflection of the flashlight. “Oh, that was Big Bad. Your wolf!”

She was helpless to stop a grin from spreading across her face as the memories flooded back to her. “That’s right.” She’d nearly forgotten about Big Bad. It had been so long. She briefly worried about what had happened to the wolf. She wondered if her mother had thrown him in with the pile of their father’s things that she’d burned.

Ainsley hesitated, but asked, “And the story you used to read to me, that was--”

They spoke simultaneously, “The Three Little Pigs.”

Martin chuckled. “Yes. You loved that one.”

Ainsley remembered. Somehow, the fact that he remembered too only solidified the place that the memory occupied in her mind. It brought her an indescribable happiness, knowing that such distant, seemingly insignificant memories meant as much to him as they had to her. Those memories were perhaps the only things in common between the two of them. The only connections she had to her father. Small connections, but strong ones. Crucial connections. Like veins-- leading straight to her heart.

She recalled the tale of The Three Little Pigs, and their homes made of straw, sticks, and bricks. It was a silly, childish story, but it was one that she’d never forget.

Martin would never forget it either. “Little pig, little pig, let me in,” he chanted as he worked.

Ainsley’s grin stretched. Her part was next. “Not by the hair of your chinny chin chin,” she echoed.

He gave her a charming smile, theatrically coloring his voice just the way he used to. “Then I will _huff_ and I’ll _puff_ and I’ll _blow_ your house down!”

This time, he succeeded in making her laugh. The reporter’s shoulders shook and tears beaded in her eyes. She’d never thought she’d hear him ‘read’ those lines to her again. She tried to ignore the emotion it brought her and instead concentrated on her job; holding the spreaders apart and pinning the flashlight against her cheek.

The suture needle hovered in the cavity of the wound as Dr. Whitly took a moment to _really_ look at her. She hesitantly lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. Her father was smiling with wonder. “Your laugh sounds _just_ as I remember,” he told her. It was a laugh he hadn’t heard in twenty years.

For a moment, she thought she saw the same happiness on his face that she wanted to allow herself to feel in her own heart. For a moment, she thought she saw the person who she remembered. The person who she’d hoped was still alive, deep down inside of him.

A lump swelled in the young woman’s throat. She realized how much she _missed_ laughing. How much he used to make her laugh, back when it was easy for her naive little self to find the good in everything in her life. Especially in him. Back when there were no monsters. No murder victims, no stigmas, no questions, no fear.

She missed that time. She missed _him._

Ainsley’s guarded facade crumbled apart as she felt an invisible dagger sink into her soul.

Martin smiled as he watched her break. Emotions played across his daughter’s pained face that were both riveting and deeply satisfying to him.

Dr. Whitly looked over to Malcolm’s tourniquet, then suddenly reached out to unclip the stick. It helicoptered open and the constricting tourniquet around his son’s thigh was released.

Ainsley whirled a startled glance down at Malcolm’s wound. The cardboard, clamps, and other entities had already been removed from the surgical site. Dr. Whitly watched the blood flow back into the tissue, spotting exactly where the leaks sprung. The biggest ones had successfully been tied off.

“I told you it wouldn’t take long,” he murmured, amused by her brief shock. Ainsley took a breath, grateful that it was already over. “Here, I can take that from you.” He calmly presented his gloved hand before tenderly reaching for the flashlight. His knuckle smeared blood across her neck again, but she didn’t mind. She was grateful to be able to relax her shoulder, no longer at risk of dropping the flashlight into her brother’s leg.

As he stuffed some new gauze down into the wound, he held the flashlight in one hand, monitoring how the blood pressure in the limb stabilized. After spying nothing alarming, he permitted her, “You can remove those now.”

With an uneasy grimace, Ainsley slowly lifted the popsicle sticks, which were soaked in blood.

“Carefully. There you go.”

When the makeshift spreaders were free, Ainsley took a large breath and rested her forearms on her knees. The popsicle sticks clattered to the floor. Her hands were trembling with the buzz of her heightened senses. She’d adapted to running on adrenaline as her default fuel, but her tank was nearing empty.

Dr. Whitly began peeling off his gloves. “I’d call that a job well done,” he announced merrily, appearing very thrilled by their teamwork. He couldn’t have done it without her cooperation.

While her father was energized by their accomplishment, Ainsley suffered a wave of emotional and mental exhaustion. She wasn't quite yet able to comprehend what they’d achieved, which was save Malcolm’s life. Together.

Martin looked at her with the same gentle intensity as before. “He’s going to be just fine,” he promised with a reassuring nod of his head. “Thanks to us.” The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled with his smile.

Ainsley nodded back. She replayed his voice over and over again in her head. _‘He’s going to be just fine. He’s going to be just fine.’_

She believed him. Either that, or she was simply too numbed by the cumulative trauma of the day to feel any more fear. Too tired to ask any more questions.

Martin eyed an object behind her and hesitated before pointing at it and asking, “Can you grab that for me?”

In a daze, she followed his line of sight.

A packaged roller bandage was lying on the ground behind her.

Beside the taser.

Martin watched his daughter carefully.

She crawled over to fetch the bandage and returned to him without giving the weapon a single glance. She might not have seen it at all, since it was entirely useless and irrelevant to their current situation, in her foggy mind.

Dr. Whitly smiled.

He lifted and bent Malcolm’s knee to prop up his leg before starting the wrap. Ainsley helpfully took the bandage from the other side of her brother’s limb each time the roll circled around to her. “Gently pull towards yourself as you wrap it. Not too tight,” Dr. Whitly taught her. “That’s it.” Their bare hands brushed against each other with every hand-off. Once. Twice. Three times. Ainsley lost count after five. She no longer felt any tingles of electricity at his touch.

She worked silently, glad to switch her brain off and just go through some simple, easy motions. The distraction of his voice was soothing, and so the young woman did whatever she was told. At some point, her father handed her a scissor. He finished the wrap and secured it down after she cut the bandage from the roll. “Good. Now can you do the others?”

She nodded.

He handed her some alcohol pads, hemostatic agents, and adhesive bandages. “Use these. Cut his clothing if you have to. Give yourself plenty of room to work.”

Ainsley tended to her brother’s other lacerations. With some effort, she snipped through the tightly-knit fabric of his jacket sleeves, wiped his injuries with the alcohol pads then started stuffing them with gauze and clotting agents.

“Yes, just like that,” Dr. Whitly encouraged as he watched her. “Great job, sweetheart.”

Despite her sedated state, she quickly fell into the rhythm of her new job. Ainsley became so consumed by the simple process of plugging up the holes in her patient that she didn't notice when The Surgeon rose to his feet and stepped to the other side of his son’s body, circling behind her. The reporter’s mind churned too sluggishly to even think to keep track of the serial killer.

With each glow of the red lights, The Surgeon appeared somewhere else in the space behind her. Every ebb of the crimson hue revealed him in a different spot, with different objects glinting in his hands. Ainsley was too trapped in her numb trance to realize what freely stalked behind her. Her hypnotism only began to wear off when she finished with Malcolm’s wounds and knelt there silently, waiting to be told what to do next like a minion in servitude who couldn’t think for herself. She furrowed her brow, recalling her own identity and remembering where she was.

She wasn’t attending some Red Cross training seminar. She was stuck in a psychiatric prison that was on lockdown due to a dangerous, armed, and escaped murderer.

The reporter jumped with a small gasp as Dr. Whitly dropped to his knees beside her. She swiftly crawled away from him, wide-eyed and now entirely aware of the incredibly _stupid_ thing she’d done, which was allow herself to fall into a sense of security where _no_ security could be found.

But The Surgeon paid no attention to her, instead unlatching a case and removing some strange equipment from it.

Ainsley’s heart galloped. She remembered the taser.

It was gone.

Her fear compounded as she glanced around for it, but the only objects strewn across the floor were the medical supplies.

Dr. Whitly continued to ignore her as he selected a specific gauge of IV and size of tubing, expertly assembling another contraption with clamps and cartridges and saline fluid. Using his teeth and his free hand, he tied a band of rubber around his own upper arm. Before Ainsley even pieced together what was happening, she saw him slide a frightfully large needle into his elbow at a shallow angle. It sank into his skin like a toothpick sinking into a soft cake.

Ainsley winced in empathy. “What is that?”

Red liquid traveled through the tube attached to the needle, but it stopped at a point where a clamp pinched. While preparing the other end of the catheter and ensuring that there was no air in the line, Dr. Whitly slowly explained, “This... is a blood transfusion kit.” He tied a band of rubber around Malcolm's upper arm as well. With a gentle press of his thumb, he found the veins in his patient's elbow and slid another large needle into the profiler's arm. “He’s lost quite a bit. This should tide him over until he gets to the hospital.”

Ainsley nervously watched the procedure. “What about blood types?”

“We’re the same,” Dr. Whitly assured with a smile. He opened the plastic clamp with a _click_. Red liquid flooded through the tube in the blink of an eye as blood rapidly transferred from father to son. “He is an ‘O’ negative,” Martin boasted. “Like his old man.”

Ainsley gazed at the thin red line binding them to each other. ‘O’ was a very special blood type, with a very altruistic connotation, because it was the universal donor. Liquid gold, in terms of life-saving elixirs. How ironic.

“Hand me the tape.” 

Ainsley did as she was told.

Dr. Whitly secured the catheters down on their arms, then sighed tiredly as he sat against the wall beside his son. Settling in for a hard-earned rest, Martin tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and allowed his arm to drain.

The most difficult part was over.


	7. Chapter 7

A few moments of silence passed, but Ainsley was slow to relax. She crouched by her brother’s ankles and struggled to compute everything that had just happened, trying to regain her senses and clarity of mind. Her fear slowly began to subside as she found comfort in the fact that Dr. Whitly was at least somewhat chained again. He didn’t appear intent on doing anything harmful. Even if he did, his range of motion was once again strictly limited, and she was well out of it.

As Ainsley calmed down, she searched for an excuse to look for that taser. Just in case. The house-keeping values that her mother instilled in her took over, and she began gathering up the medical supplies to clean the area, all the while searching for her only defensive weapon. She moved carefully and quietly, as if afraid to disturb a nearby predator’s slumber. But The Surgeon wasn't sleeping.

Dr. Whitly broke the silence by announcing, “I must say, I haven't had _this_ much excitement in _years.”_ With a smirk, he offered his biased and blatant opinion, “I think boredom should be declared a form of _torture,_ honestly.” His chipper attitude wavered, and he gazed over at the far wall as if it displayed a distant, bitter memory. “And I’ve been tortured for too long.”

Ainsley tried to ignore him. She’d collected a few things in her arms and slowly stood up to move to the medicine cabinet.

Dr. Whitly watched her with a smile as if he knew what was about to happen.

The reporter froze as she discovered that the cabinet was padlocked shut. Standing there with her arms full, looking like a complete moron, she stared at the blank white door. She realized that her father had locked it when she hadn’t been paying attention. She swallowed, then spoke up with a hoarse voice. “The taser’s in here, isn’t it?”

Dr. Whitly’s smile brightened. “It is.”

She blinked slowly, pursing her lips with irritation. He had taken away her weapon, and by doing so, he’d taken away her power and control. Her brother was incapacitated. No guards remained on the hospital floor. She was completely alone with him, and completely defenseless against him. The only reason she wasn’t currently freaking out was because he was bound to Malcolm by another thin red line; the final measure of safety that separated him from her.

The medical supplies dropped from Ainsley’s arms as she turned to give him a look. A look that told him she’d had enough of his _bullshit._

Martin smiled up at her innocently, enjoying the look she gave him. Curious as to why she was so upset, he shrugged his shoulders and asked, “What? What’s wrong?”

“You locked the taser in the cabinet,” she growled.

“Of course I did,” he chuckled, as if it had been the obvious thing to do. He used the hand that was not donating blood to his son to point at the cabinet, adding, _“And_ Tevin’s knife.” Clearly, he expected her to be very proud of him for putting his toys away.

But there was no way for her to verify any of that, since she couldn’t open it to look inside.

Her hands were on her hips. “And the scalpel?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. She hadn’t forgotten about that one.

There was a pleased twinkle in Martin’s eye. _Clever girl._

He pretended to search his memory. “Yyyyes,” he decided with a nod, dragging out the word. “And the scalpel,” he confirmed. Martin flashed a teasing smirk at her, quite humored by his own performance.

Ainsley was not. She glared at him. “You really think I’m going to believe that?” It offended her that he would tell such an overt lie to her face-- and try to make a joke out of it. She would be a complete idiot to trust that he’d put _all_ of his dangerous trinkets away.

Her anger entertained him. Martin shook his head and grinned, “You sound so much like your mother, it’s almost _scary.”_

Sobering up, he dimmed his smile and gestured with his free arm again, pointing down the hall behind her. “When those officers come bursting through that door, do you think I _want_ to be caught possessing something I shouldn’t?” he asked in all seriousness.

Doubt bubbled up inside Ainsley, though her glare remained. She was loathe to admit, he had a point. But she hated that she couldn’t know for sure.

Dr. Whitly gave her a look. “Wouldn’t be very wise of me, would it?”

She challenged him with a lift of her chin, “Throw me the key, and let me look for myself.”

He tipped his head and winced apologetically. “If I still _had it,_ darling, I would.”

The reporter failed to hide a sigh. Sure he would. And of course he didn’t have it, or said that he didn’t.

“That’s _also_ something I shouldn’t be caught in possession of,” he explained, nodding, “You understand.”

Ainsley didn’t believe that he’d locked the key in the cabinet. She didn’t believe that he’d locked the scalpel in there either, but there was no way for her to find out the truth for herself. She let it go, knowing that it didn’t matter. As long as she stayed away from him, she was safe.

The young woman slowly removed her glare to look down the hallway. The SWAT team should be arriving at any moment. She’d expected to feel more relief about that, but it was hard to feel anything beyond her own exhaustion.

With a tilt of his head, Martin invited her back to the cozy hospital floor. “Have a seat, sweetheart. Stay a while.”

Ainsley didn’t move. 

Martin patiently tried again, but it was apparent in his unenthusiastic tone that he did not expect his second invitation to be accepted either. “Your brother’s not particularly good company, at the moment.”

She hesitantly looked back at him and attempted to read his eyes.

That was all he wanted from her. Just her company. They only had a few minutes left in this hallway, and he wanted to spend them _together._ There were no more distractions or other obligations waiting to steal their attention from each other. No danger to face. No lives to save. No cameras. No guards. No Jin. No Tevin.

And no _Malcolm._

For once in Ainsley’s life, she was the only thing left for him to focus on. 

Perhaps, deep down, that was the second thing on the list of ‘all she ever wanted from him.’ His honesty, and his undivided attention. She’d thought that with the interview, she could get both. Clearly, not.

The wiser part of her did not like having his attention completely on her. It felt like she was in the sight of a hunter’s rifle. It put her on edge and increased her heart rate. But the naive part of her starved for it, and had been starving for it for more than two decades.

Ainsley debated for one moment longer, then stepped toward him. She took a seat on the floor on the other side of Malcolm’s body, well enough away from The Surgeon. Her brother served as a new barrier between them that she would not cross.

Malcolm still appeared so peaceful in his sleep. The color had returned to his face, providing evidence that his condition had drastically improved. As she reached over to feel his pulse again, she sensed a new warmth beneath his skin. Every beat of his heart gulped fresh blood in through his arm.

He really was going to be alright. Just like Jin. The woman pressed her lips together as emotion welled up inside her throat.

Martin watched her from where he sat. “I bet you’ve never been through anything like this, have you?” he asked empathetically.

She shook her head and continued to stare at her brother’s tranquil face, struggling to hold back tears.

Her father’s voice was gentle. “You handled it all _extremely_ well, sweetheart.”

She didn’t look at him. The tears broke free and she rubbed her face with her wrist, careful not to smudge her makeup-- though it was probably already a mess.

It had all been too much. It had all been too hard, too terrifying, and too traumatic. The surgery on her brother’s leg. Her brother’s fear. Her family’s yelling. Mr. David’s death. Jin’s attack. Tevin’s screaming. His pounding. His rage. And especially, his murder. It would all haunt her nightmares for months to come.

With a sniffle, she buried her face in her hands.

“Ainsley.”

She hesitated, but peeked through her hands to look at him.

Martin’s smile was so genuine, it was almost pained. “I am very proud of you.”

Somehow, her misery and exhaustion dispersed. She lowered her hands and stared at him.

“I know this was difficult, and I know this was frightening. But you were remarkably brave today, and I couldn’t be more impressed.”

Ainsley hung on every word. She clung to the raw look in his eyes. He made no jokes. He made no excuses. He made no justifications. He only spoke the truth.

“I’m sorry that our interview was interrupted,” he apologized. “I know you were looking forward to it.”

Ainsley pushed a new wave of tears back. He had no idea.

Martin glanced down at his hands, scraping Tevin’s dried blood from his skin. “I was looking forward to it too, in fact,” he admitted. “I was happy to have a chance to see you again. In person. Not through… the TV.”

“Malcolm’s always taken the opportunity to visit me,” he stopped himself and corrected, “Well, here and there.”

There _was_ that ten year gap where he’d completely abandoned his father. Water under the bridge.

“But you…” Martin hesitated, struggling to piece together his words. He looked up at her again and shook his head with a shrug. “You never have. Until now.”

A small amount of guilt trickled through Ainsley’s chest.

“You know you didn’t have to become a _reporter_ just to see me,” he chuckled weakly. 

Ainsley knew he was only using humor as a mask to hide his true feelings behind. A defense mechanism.

“...You could have visited anytime,” he murmured gently.

There were a few unasked questions lingering in the air. The biggest one; Why hadn’t she visited him before now? And the smaller ones, potential reasons for why. Had he done a poor job of bonding with her, when she was little? Had she been too young to care, when he’d left? Had he been taken away too early for any real connection to form between them?

Ainsley didn’t want him to think that ‘yes’ was the answer to any of those questions. She blinked and wiped the rest of her tears from her cheeks. “I guess I was... scared,” she answered.

“Scared of what, exactly?” he asked, deeply interested in discovering the answer. “Scared that I’d... hurt you?” he smirked.

“No,” she shook her head. She’d never doubted Claremont’s security before. (After today, that was a different story, but that was a story she’d report on some other time.) Regardless, it was clear now that even if he _was_ free to harm her, he wouldn’t. He’d had plenty of opportunities in the past fifteen minutes, and he hadn’t taken any of them.

“I was scared that you’d be a different person,” she whispered. “Than the one I remember.”

He smiled. “I’m really not, Ainsley.”

She was scared to look at him, fearing that she’d see a stranger. When she did lift her eyes to his, she was relieved to find that she recognized them.

“I’m still your dad,” he assured her. “I’ll always be your dad.”

She fought back yet another surge of tears. They spilled out of her ocean of questions, slowly draining it. Slowly uncovering that mountain peak that she was so desperate to discover. The sea of mystery wasn't so terrifying when she could anchor upon a safe island in the middle of it. When she could dip her feet from the safety of the shore without fear of being sucked in by an undertow.

Martin nodded. “Get to know me a little better, and you’ll see that. Okay?”

She nodded back, struggling to hold in her emotion.

A glimmer of her father’s sarcastic facade returned. “Though, after all the _fun_ we’ve had today, you’re probably _never_ going to want to visit me again, are you?” he chuckled, glancing down at the dried blood on his hands. He’d flaked off a small portion of the stain in an artistic pattern.

The fact that there was even the _possibility_ of a next time was something Ainsley was incredibly grateful for. Everything really was going to be alright after all. Her prayers were coming true. Before she knew it, she and Malcolm and Jin were all going to be home safe-- as if this nightmare had never happened.

And it was all thanks to Dr. Whitly.

“I promise it’s not always like this here,” he exhaled in humor. But his smile slowly fell. Even a joke wasn't strong enough to hide the fear he felt at the possibility that she would leave, and never--

“I’ll come back,” Ainsley promised with a small nod.

“Do you really mean that?” he prompted, hesitant to believe her.

“I mean it,” she nodded more deeply. “I’ll come visit you again.”

“Good,” he nodded. He appeared very satisfied with her answer. It was the answer he’d wanted to hear.

He also appeared very tired. Almost sleepy. Dr. Whitly stopped picking at the bloody design on his hands and closed his eyes. With a renewed peace, he sighed as he rested his head back against the wall.

Ainsley stared at him, no longer afraid.

He was the same person. There were more lines in his face. His hair was longer, and a more faded color. Dark grey with small flecks of white woven in its hairs. But he was the same person she remembered.

Granted, she didn't remember all that much.

Ainsley flinched as a loud --but distant and muffled-- collection of sounds echoed through the hall. She looked behind her and listened as her heart rate increased. Men were shouting. The sound of a single percussive _bang_ rang out as someone kicked open a solid metal door. The SWAT team.

Martin was not spooked, and did not look down the hall. Instead, he opened his eyes to look up at a clock on the opposite wall and smiled as if they were right on cue.

Ainsley’s relief and excitement built upon each other. Part of her wanted to call out and run in the direction that the officers were coming from, but she knew that would be unwise. Officers who were startled-- especially in a dark environment such as this one-- were often quick to pull triggers. She knew that from her experience reporting on an array of officer-involved shootings, most of which she liked to believe were accidents and misunderstandings.

Her idea was even more unwise when one took into account what little information the officers knew. All they knew was that a dangerous inmate had escaped his cell and had left a trail of bodies in the wake of his serial rampage.

Ainsley’s breath caught in her throat. She whirled back to Dr. Whitly.

He was still sitting beside Malcolm, his cardigan and prison uniform caked with dried blood.

“You need to go back,” she whispered in a rush. “You need to go back to your room.”

He turned his head to drowsily look at her, and then smiled. It was an earnest, delighted, mischievous smile-- as if he’d caught her doing something she shouldn’t have been. Like stealing a cookie from a forbidden jar. “Are you worried about me?” he grinned, charmed by her concern.

“Please go back,” she pleaded as she faced him. She continued to glance over her shoulder in fear. How much time did he have to return to his cell? Was it enough?

“Oh, Ainsley,” he drawled, rolling his head to look down at the bloodline connecting him to his son. “I think it’d be best if I stayed here for as _long_ as possible.” He nodded to the IV in his son’s arm.

She would have none of his martyrdom. She ushered her father to leave with more urgency. “He’ll be fine, _go!”_ Her entire arm flew out as she pointed in the direction of his cell. Like she was scattering rose petals as far as humanly possible.

His grin widened as he watched her panic.

She glared at him, despising his stubborn refusal to obey her. This was not funny. This was not a joke. This could very well be life and death, and she’d do whatever it took to make him listen to her.

Ainsley set her jaw and lunged.

She reached across her brother’s body for the needle in Malcolm’s arm, intent on dislodging the red chain strung between the two men. Dr. Whitly was surprised by her sudden movement, but reacted in a blur. Evidently, she’d inherited his speed. Her hand closed around the needle in Malcolm’s vein just as Dr. Whitly’s hand closed around her wrist.

 _“Don’t!”_ her father snapped. “You’ll damage him!”  
  
The Surgeon’s grip was incredibly tight around her wrist, but she didn’t notice. She was not letting go of Malcolm’s needle. If The Surgeon wrestled with her at all, it would ‘damage him,’ as her father had said. It was a strange phrase. It implied that Malcolm was comparable to a precious, irreplaceable shipment of rare goods. Not a person.

“Let go, and take your end out,” she demanded. There was a clear threat of _‘or else,’_ in her tone.

When she didn’t immediately rip the needle out of her brother’s arm, Martin relaxed. “Alright,” he breathed, surrendering. “Alright.” Carefully, he let go of her wrist and started removing the needle from his own arm.

She took her hand away from her brother and leaned back to her own side of his body, placing a safe distance between her and the unchained Surgeon. 

The shouts and footsteps of the SWAT team echoed more loudly through the halls. 

“Hurry,” she hissed as Dr. Whitly carefully took the needle out of Malcolm’s arm. He lingered to start dressing the hole it left in his son’s flesh, while his own untreated insertion site bled down his arm in a rivulet.

“Dad, go!” Ainsley hissed, leaning forward again to push him away from Malcolm. He fell back on his heels and she rushed to finish the job for him, untying the rubber tourniquet from Malcolm’s arm and pressing down the gauze and adhesive bandage over her brother's elbow.

Dr. Whitly regained his balance and watched her with a grin. But he did not leave. He needed an answer first, and he was willing to blackmail her for it. “You promise you’ll visit me again?” he asked, holding her to her words.

She grabbed another piece of gauze and an adhesive bandage, reaching over her brother to shove the packets into her father’s chest. “Yes, I promise, now go back to your--!”

His fingers wrapped around her wrist again. This time, gently, but still enough that she couldn’t easily slip away. She didn’t try to. She stared into his eyes as her heart thundered in her chest, but she felt no fear. At least, none for herself. It wasn't a malicious hold. He was simply possessing her --possessing something he shouldn’t-- for only a moment, while he still could. They knelt there on either side of Malcolm for no longer than a second, but it felt like a frozen stretch of time.

The SWAT Team continued to slowly trample through the halls, following the trail of bodies like Froot Loops.

Ainsley pulled her hand away, and Martin let her slip through his fingers. Holding her gifts against his chest, he smiled at her one last time and then rose to his feet. She watched him leave, too stunned to say anything more. Her arm burned with the warm electricity of his touch. She realized all too late that it was a touch that said ‘goodbye.’

He strode down the hall, glancing back at the noises and pressing the square of gauze to his elbow to stop the blood trickling down his arm. The packaging of the Band-Aid fluttered to the ground as he stuck the bandage over his skin and tugged down his sleeve. With every ebb of the crimson lights, he appeared further and further away. His cardigan billowed lightly as he turned to disappear around a corner.

Before Ainsley had a chance to catch her breath, he was gone.

It was over.

She should have felt a great relief, but she didn’t. Her chest was tight, and her throat was clenched. Tears welled in her eyes again, and her heart fluttered with panic. She was _losing_ him. She was losing him _again_ \-- and just like last time, she didn’t get to say goodbye.

The reporter knew that she shouldn’t have moved. She knew that she should have stayed with her brother. She should have sat still, held her hands up where the officers could see them, and waited for them to surround her and tell her what to do, tell her that everything was going to be alright. But they wouldn’t have said it as convincingly as him.

Ainsley stumbled to her feet and ran. “Dad, wait!” She rounded the corner and ran into a sunlight-bathed hall, abandoning the darkness behind her and calling again, “Dad!”

The Surgeon turned to watch her rush toward him.

This was her last chance. Her _only_ chance, and she was taking it. Even if she did schedule another interview with him in the future, he’d never be as accessible to her as he was now.

Now, it was just the two of them. No Malcolm. No guards. No chains, no tethers, no red lines.

This was the only moment in her entire adult life that she’d ever have the opportunity to do this. Everything inside of her _screamed_ for her not to do it, but she did it anyway. While she still could.

Ainsley collided against him in a tight embrace.


	8. Chapter 8

Something inside of the reporter told her that this wasn’t real, instead only a dream or a hallucination. Her disoriented disbelief shattered when she slung her arms around his neck, pressed her hands to his back, and matched their chests together.

He was no hallucination. He was entirely tangible in her grasp. Ainsley could feel his warmth. She could feel his heart beating adjacent to hers. His cardigan was soft and his body was cushioned similarly to a pillow, yet he was unmistakably strong and solid in mass. Like a bear, crossbred between a teddy and a grizzly.

Her blonde curls snagged on the grey hairs of his beard, which were simultaneously wiry and soft. Ainsley shut her eyes and buried her face in his neck, where she found the familiar, special scent that had perfumed the prison blanket. It was the scent of _him._ His natural musk drowned her with memories.

The reporter choked through a strangled sob and squeezed him as much as she dared. Her shoulders shook as she lamented into the fibers of his cardigan. After today, she’d never be able to hug her father again, so she made it count. She feared that if she let go, she’d release him to sink into the depths of a bottomless ocean. She feared that if she gave up her forbidden possession of him, she’d never again find the man she knew beneath the surface of a stranger.

Ainsley wished that she could hug all of the _bad_ out of him. She wished that she could erase his history of murder. His ‘ _sickness,’_ as he’d called it. If it really was a disease, then it could be cured, couldn’t it?

She had to believe that it could.

Ainsley believed that if she could just find a way to magically repair him, then he would be so _wonderful,_ and _good._

She just knew it.

If only a surgical procedure could fix what was wrong inside of him, like it could fix Jin’s hemothorax, or Malcom’s severed vein.

As his daughter collided against him, Dr. Whitly took a step back to steady himself from the force of her weight. He froze with his arms hovering in the air as he processed what was happening. It’d been twenty years since anyone had last embraced him. Even then, they’d only done so because they didn’t know what he had done, or what he was capable of doing.

Ainsley knew. Yet she hugged him anyway.

His cold shock settled into a warm disbelief, and Martin Whitly blinked. Maybe, just maybe, he was truly touched by her actions. Maybe her embrace sent a jolt of electricity through his nervous system. Maybe he felt a small twinge in his corrupted heart. But even if that were true, it wasn't enough to change him.

Nothing ever would be, and that was the tragedy of it.

The Surgeon blinked again. His broad smile returned. He privately took a second to revel in the irony of the situation, and then he remembered that the appropriate response was to close his arms around her back in return.

“Oh, _Ainsley,”_ he cooed with a condescending compassion. His hands lightly pressed against her spine. He tipped his head toward hers, taking in the flowery scent of her sculpted blonde curls.

Ainsley’s body trembled while she sobbed into his neck, her tears saturating his cardigan.

As his smile grew, so did the pressure with which he hugged her. Carefully, but noticeably, he tightened his arms around her back and smirked in her hair. Soon, he was squeezing her just as much as she was squeezing him.

Then, even more.

Martin clamped his arms around her and murmured in her ear, “It’s alright, sweetheart,” 

Ainsley endured the compression of her ribs without complaint or fear, allowing herself to suffocate against his shoulder, swarmed by his scent. She had faith that he would release her before her lungs began to ache.

Too much.

As the last of her breath escaped from her chest, she welcomed the absence of oxygen. It stopped those great big sobs that she had no control over. She closed her eyes, relaxed her arms around his shoulders, and let her sorrows float away during the suspension of air.

“Everything’s alright.”

The Surgeon held her for a moment longer, intending to give her an embrace she would remember. Imprinting on her, so she would never forget _him_. That person she thought she knew.

Finally, he alleviated the pressure of his hold and allowed her to breathe again.

The young woman sucked in a breath and then sniffled against his shoulder, effectively calmed by his trick. It was as if he’d pressed and held down a secret ‘reset’ button in her very core. As her father smoothed her hair down and held the back of her head, Ainsley savored what she knew to be the last moment of their embrace. Her fingers curled around the back of his cardigan and she took a large, quivering sigh against his collar.

“I have to go, now.” He placed his hands on her shoulders and gently parted from her-- just enough so he could look at her. “You stay right here, okay?”

Ainsley stared at his captivating smile, her cheeks drenched in tears. She was trapped in the spell of another stunned trance. This one was cast by his kind touch and maintained by his undivided attention. Things which she’d spent twenty years secretly starving for. She felt his fingertips brush down her temple, tucking a tear-soaked strand of hair behind her ear. His palm came to rest on the side of her jaw, over the spot where her brother’s blood was smeared. Dr. Whitly admired the smudge like it was a pretty birthmark on her skin.

She held his wrist, tenderly wrapping her fingers around the place where handcuffs belonged.

“You will see me again, sweetheart. Don’t you worry,” he grinned.

Those who knew better would have called it a triumphant grin, because he had won.

Not just the battle, but the entire war.

And it was all thanks to her.

Before the reporter knew it, he’d pulled his hand away, and she let him slip through her fingers. She was spooked out of her trance by the yelling of the officers in the halls behind her. Whirling around, she felt her heart drum through her chest. She could tell they’d found Malcolm, around the corner. She heard their radios bleep and crackle as they called for the medical team.

When Ainsley turned back, The Surgeon had vanished like a phantom.

* * *

Ainsley hurled forth a bloodcurdling scream, removed far from peace. Her stuffed animals lay in defeat beside her, providing no comfort. A great heave of air curled and belted from her tiny lungs once more, and her eyes closed from the mighty pressure of her cries. She bawled as loudly as she could bawl. So loudly, she did not hear the muffled footsteps in the hall, nor hear the door _click_ open.

“Ainsley,”

The four-year-old opened her eyes. Her father was a blur through the distorted filter of her glistening tears. She opened her arms to him, allowing the edge of her blanket to fall so she could trade it for something far more effective.

“Ainsley, Ainsley, Ainsley,” he chided on his way over. He lowered himself onto the edge of her pink bed and placed his hands around her ribs. With a sigh, Martin lifted the crying child out from under the covers and set her on his leg to hug her against his chest. Her short blonde curls snagged on the dark hairs of his chin.

The four-year-old clung to him, trying to staunch the flow of her tears by burying her face into his shirt, where she continued to wail uncontrollably. She pressed her mouth into the thick sweater to lament into its fibers and hide herself from the nightmarish world as best she could. Somehow, she believed that sweater could filter out all of the bad things in her world.

The little girl suffered through a tsunami of emotions that were far too big and powerful for her to wrestle. But her father knew how to regain control over them, and he helped her calm down by tightening one strong arm against her back and hushing, “Shhhh, shhh shhh shhh.” He smoothed her hair down and held the back of her head, keeping her face pressed against his shoulder. “That’s enough.”

His arm continued to squeeze her.

She focused on his scent, clinging tightly to him as her muffled screams and sobs fizzled out. Her emotions numbed as her brain focused on her lack of oxygen and over-supply of carbon dioxide-- the burn of which gradually grew in her deprived lungs. When they began to ache too much, she gave a small push to let him know.

“Are you finished crying?” he asked.

She nodded into his shoulder and pushed again.

After a moment, he released her.

She parted from him and sucked a few broken breaths into her lungs. His little trick had succeeded. It’d been a bit alarming, as was natural when one found themself unable to breathe for a moment, but she calmed down quickly, grateful that she was no longer wracked with emotions she couldn’t control.

His fingertips brushed down her temple, tucking a tear-soaked strand of her hair behind her ear. “Now, tell me what’s wrong, sweetheart.”

Her plump, overheated cheeks were drenched in tears. After inhaling a large sigh that sent a tremble through her whole body, her breathing began to settle, save for the occasional hiccup of sorrow. She whined in a language only a parent could decipher, “There was a mon’ter in my room.”

“A monster?” he grinned. “Oh, sweetie, there’s no such thing as monsters.”

“Yes there _are!”_ she insisted angrily, frustrated that he didn’t believe her.

Martin did his best to hide his chuckle.

“They’re scary,” she complained as she rubbed her eyes with her balled fists.

“Ohhh, but I know something that is _much_ **_scarier.”_ **

“Wut?” she blubbered, removing her hands from her face to blink through her residual tears.

He grinned devilishly at her. _“Me.”_

She didn’t believe him, back then.

“No monsters are going to come anywhere near you,” he shook his head and narrowed his eyes. “They wouldn’t dare.”

She sniffled while listening to his promise, then gasped with a shocked breath as his fingers dug into her ribs.

“I’d _kill ‘em,”_ he hissed playfully.

Ainsley didn’t think that was funny. The girl pouted and rubbed her eyes again. She didn’t think he was being very serious about this monster business _at all,_ and the four-year-old didn’t appreciate that.

If only she had known.

Martin’s humored grin dropped when a new voice spoke up from the doorway. 

“Dad.” 

A boy was standing in the entrance to the dimly lit hall, dressed in button-up pajamas and wearing a scrutinous, blank look. His expression was nearly always cemented with a hard vigilance, even at that age. The boy stared at him, absorbing every detail of the scene like his pupils were tiny black holes in a galaxy of information.

“Is she okay?” Malcolm asked.

Martin met his son’s eyes with a brief layer of guardedness, wondering how much he’d observed. But he answered the boy with a gentle voice and a renewed smile. “Yes.”

Malcolm noticed that his father’s grip loosened around Ainsley. Just a little. As if he’d nearly been caught possessing something that he shouldn’t.

“Yes, she’s just fine,” Martin grinned, looking back at the girl as she wiped her face. “Aren’t you, Ainsley?”

The girl continued pouting about her father’s failure to take her fears seriously, but she nodded. Malcolm stared at his little sister, deciphering the truth.

Martin placed the girl back in her bed and peeled her little hands off his sweater. “I have to go, now.” He tucked her wolf and her piggy on either side of her. 

Ainsley hugged her stuffed animals tightly.

“And _you_ have to go back….” The man booped her nose with his finger. “To sleep.”

She didn’t want to feel better, but she was powerless to resist the boop. She hid a teary smile behind her stuffed animals.

His palm came to rest on the side of her round face, warming it. “Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

She blinked up at him with large hazel eyes and nodded into the synthetic fur of her wolf.

His smile beamed. “Good.”

The bed shifted as he stood up. She watched his tall form walk away to join her brother in the darkness of the hallway. Ainsley dragged her sad gaze to Malcolm, who was still staring inquisitively at her. She broke their eye contact to bury her face in the pillow. As Martin placed a hand on his son’s shoulder, Malcolm looked up at him for a moment, then continued to gaze at Ainsley for as long as he could before Martin closed the door with a quiet _click._

* * *

_Click._

_'_ _What consoles me is that, as a doctor, I saved thousands of lives.’_

_Click._

_‘So if we’re judging the moral worth of a person based on the mark they leave on the world, mine is a… a net positive.’_

Ainsley executed another _click_ to pause the media on her laptop, then removed her delicate finger from the mousepad. With a great sigh, she ripped off her headphones and dipped her head down to drag her fingers through her hair, breaking apart her curls. She knew that no one would blame her if she put her work away and took a few days --or at least, a few _hours--_ of rest to recover from the events of the day, but she needed a distraction.

The hospital room offered none. She’d go insane if she continued to listen to the humming of the air conditioner and the faint beeping of whatever monitor was hooked up to her brother’s sleeping form. Malcolm had only been in the operating room for ten minutes before they’d wheeled him back out, claiming their job had already been mostly done for them. He would wake up in a few hours, they told her. When the pain meds kicked in and his levels stabilized and his anesthesia wore off.

So, he wasn't particularly good company, at the moment.

The best distraction Ainsley could find was her father’s voice, even though it didn’t sound quite the same in her headphones as it did in person. She took another breath and looked down at her editing timeline. The reporter had a great chunk of footage and audio to comb through, and she figured that she may as well make some progress on it while she waited for her brother to regain consciousness.

The problem was; she had no idea how she would edit her story. The angle she’d planned on taking was now so twisted and distorted and broken in her head that she felt like she’d backed herself into the corner of a labyrinth. She didn’t know how to paint The Surgeon anymore. As a narcissist, a murderer, a _monster…_ or an unexpected hero. Her ambivalence would continue to last for hours, or even days. Perhaps for the rest of her life. 

Ainsley supposed it didn’t matter, because she didn't have much of a choice anyway. Some of the tools with which to paint him had been stolen away. The footage of his provoked outburst was missing.

That sly son of a bitch. No offense, grandma.

The reporter closed her eyes and tried to massage a migraine out of her temples. She was dreading the inevitable call to her producer where she’d have to apologize for and explain the physical damage to the equipment she’d brought into the psych ward. She doubted the three-thousand-dollar camera lens that had suffered a beating when Tevin had attacked Malcolm was repairable. She’d call the body mic that had marinated in Tevin’s blood for twenty minutes (until the SWAT team did a half-ass job of cleaning it and giving it back to her in a plastic baggy) a total loss, too. No way was she allowing that thing to circulate back in her station’s inventory.

She realized those soulless objects were petty things to grieve over, when actual lives had been lost. Like Mr. David, who had seemed like such a nice man.

Ainsley’s expression tightened as she felt her heart clench. She began to scold herself. None of this would have ever happened if she had just listened to her mother. If she had just--

_‘Don’t play that game.’_

She opened her eyes to look at her laptop. Her father was a blur through the distortion of her glistening tears. She blinked and wiped her lower eyelids with her fingertips, careful not to smudge her definitely-already-smudged makeup.

Martin’s frozen eyes gazed back at her from the screen.

_‘Don’t play the ‘should have, would have, could have’ game. You will always lose. Take it from me.’_

She took a quivering breath and stared at him.

The memories continued to surface.

_‘What matters is what you’re doing now.’_

The phantoms continued to speak.

_‘Let me help him. Like I helped Jin.’_

Ainsley’s recent memories tangled together in time, weaving themselves into a new story that replayed inside her head as vividly as they had played out in reality.

_‘Sweetheart, you don’t have to agree with me, but I believe that parents are supposed to love their children.’_

Ainsley remembered their hug. She remembered the way he felt in her arms, and the way his arms felt around her. He was no monster. He was entirely human. He could bleed. He could feel fear. And if her deepest memories served her right, he could love, too.

_‘They’re supposed to take care of them.'_

Ainsley remembered wrapping the bandage around Malcolm’s leg. She remembered how her fingers brushed against her father’s with each hand-off of the roll.

_‘Gently pull towards yourself as you wrap it. Not too tight.’_

Ainsley stared at the screen of her laptop, her expression packed full of emotions-- the most prominent one; heartache.

_‘Teach them things, and... be their support structure.’_

Ainsley remembered removing the popsicle sticks from Malcolm’s leg, and the great relief and exhaustion she felt afterward. She hadn’t realized it at the time, but she’d felt a sense of accomplishment and empowerment in that moment, too. She remembered the feeling of doing something difficult that she’d never done before -- _successfully--_ under the guidance of a good teacher.

_‘Yes, just like that. Great job, sweetheart.’_

Ainsley remembered his smile.

_‘I am very proud of you.’_

Ainsley closed her eyes and let her tears run down her cheeks.

_‘They’re supposed to protect their children. From anything,’_

_‘INNERVIEW ME!!'_

Ainsley remembered her own scream and the snap of the tether’s chain. She remembered the discolored blue hue of Tevin’s face as her father had pulled his snare tight.

_‘Don’t look.’_

She remembered the sounds.

_‘And if they don’t, then…. Well, what good are they?'_

In one afternoon, her father had made up for twenty years of what a parent should do, but couldn’t when they were in prison. Ainsley was torn in two. Her smile was agonized, and her heart clenched with emotion while it pulsed with fear. She couldn’t banish the sight of the blood-soaked carpet and Tevin’s corpse from her mind, but those mental images conflicted with the ever-lingering picture of his wonderful smile and the sound of his calming voice.

_‘Isn’t that what counts? That in the end, I did some good?’_


	9. Chapter 9

Ainsley flinched at the sound of a snapping restraint, but it wasn't that of a tether or a chain. It was the sound of the leather straps around her brother’s arms. She whirled a glance at Malcolm, realizing she’d been too immersed in her memories to notice his mumbles and whimpers-- which now erupted into screams.

She stood up and hurried to his side, repeating, “Malcolm, it's alright. It's okay.” She held his arm and kept talking to him until he grasped some sense of himself and his surroundings. “You're safe. You’re in the hospital. Everything’s alright.”

The profiler regained his breath and squeezed his eyes shut before executing a few harsh blinks. He was still groggy, but he’d regained the majority of his consciousness. She held his shoulder and continued to soothe him, trying her best to craft a convincing smile. The only honest thing about it was her relief that he was okay.

He gradually calmed and gasped, “What happened? After I passed out, what happened?”

Ainsley hesitated. He didn't remember their father swooping in to save him. That was probably for the best. “The officers came in,” she answered with a dry throat. It wasn’t a complete lie.

He continued to blink the anesthesia-induced sleep from his eyes, wincing all the while. “And dad?”

“He’s still in Claremont,” she murmured. “Everything’s as it was before.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, squinting through his spotty vision. “Did you keep him away?”

Ainsley only answered his first question. “Yes.” She pretended to smile again. She was terrible at it. “I’m... just a bit shaken up, is all.” The reporter changed subjects, pointing at him and trying to make a joke. _“You’re_ the one who looks like you’ve been through a paper shredder.”

Malcolm looked down at his leg. Beneath the hospital blanket, he could feel that his thigh was sewn-up and bandaged. He knew that in a couple of weeks, all he’d have to show for it would be a scar-- one that he’d carry with him every step for the rest of his life.

Ainsley wiped her face. Malcolm realized she’d been crying, and he held her arm. Ainsley took his hand in hers and rubbed his knuckles with her thumb. His touch comforted her, and she hoped that hers comforted him too. “You’re going to be okay.” After a few moments, she added, “Jin is, too.” This time, her smile came much easier to her.

Malcolm’s look was not necessarily one of relief. He was more concerned. The profiler had noticed the dangerously _fond_ tone she’d used to deliver the news. 

Through her tears, Ainsley released a weary but honest chuckle, “Dad saved him.”

She wished she could tell him, _‘And you.’_

Their father deserved at least a little credit for those things, didn’t he?

Malcolm stared up at her, his gaze a borderline glare. “And what else did he do?” he asked.

Ainsley’s spirits fell, and for a moment she worried that her brother suspected what she was hiding.

“Did he kill Tevin?” Malcolm prompted her with a lift of his eyebrows.

Ainsley somewhat relaxed, but felt guilty at the same time. She didn’t have the heart to answer him. It was clear her answer was ‘yes,’ and Malcolm had figured as much. His expression settled as his point was made.

Their father certainly deserved credit for _that._ A twenty fourth murder. And that was only what was known. There was still the girl in the box, and however many other victims that were never discovered or connected to him.

“He did it to protect me,” Ainsley justified.

A confused look pinched the profiler’s face.

“Tevin came at me with the knife, and dad stopped him.”

Malcolm narrowed his eyes. _“How_ did he stop him?”

Ainsley broke their eye contact, glancing down at his hand. To avoid the conversation, she busied herself with unbuckling his restraints. Malcolm stared at her and waited for an answer.

“He used his tether,” Ainsley mumbled. The tether that ‘screamed serial killer,’ as she’d described earlier to Jin.

 _“Were you behind--!?”_ Malcolm stopped himself and glanced around the room as he exhaled an angry breath. The red line. She’d crossed the fucking red line.

“I had to get away from Tevin!” the reporter exclaimed with a lift of her arms. She’d freed one of his.

Malcolm shook his head, grit his teeth, and then began unbuckling his other arm.

Ainsley rolled her eyes. He could be mad all he wanted. He hadn’t been in that room at the time. He didn’t understand the situation she’d faced. He didn’t understand the decision she’d had to make.

“I’m not saying he’s a _saint,_ Malcolm. But he didn't _have_ to help us. He didn’t have to help _you.”_ she gestured at her brother as he angrily finished with his strap. Softly, and with a deep internal reflection, she murmured, “He saved our _lives.”_

“Ainsley,” Malcolm warned with a glare. “Don’t defend him.”

She stubbornly pouted at him.

Sitting up carefully, he sighed and ran his hands through his hair, wiping away as much distress from his mind as he could. He brought his hands in front of his lips and pressed them together as if sending a brief prayer to God for help. Then he smiled tightly at his sister. “How did Tevin know about that interview, Ains?” he asked, aiming to lead her down a new pathway of thought and shed some light on her narrow-sighted perspective.

Ainsley was ready for the pessimistic sleuth’s rhetorical questioning. “He saw me and Jin setting it up,” she answered with a lift of her chin, folding her arms across her chest.

Malcolm asked his next question, “How did he know your _name?”_

She hesitated.

Malcolm tried not to smile too triumphantly.

She glared at him, then threw her hands up. “Okay, but just because dad _might_ have mentioned that I was coming to interview him doesn’t mean he orchestrated everything.”

“He’s done it before,” Malcolm reminded her. “Remember the first case I had with the NYPD? That copycat Surgeon? Dad had a hand in that.” He pointed at her. “The murderer was one of his patients. He _gave_ him the pages from his sketchbook! He planted that evidence _so that I would come back to him.”_ That was the most important part. The _why._

Ainsley thought about that. She recalled the devout sentiment of gratitude that Tevin had whispered in Dr. Whitly’s cell. It had been a strange thing to say over a gifted mic. After closing her eyes for a brief moment, she pushed her doubts aside and folded her arms across her chest again.

“Don’t underestimate him, Ains,” Malcolm begged, professing, “He is a _manipulator._ He knows how to make people--”

His sister interrupted him. “You are _such_ an _asshole.”_ She paced the room with a series of angry gestures. “You’ve been visiting dad for _weeks_ and the one time-- the _ONE_ time that _I_ visit him, all hell breaks loose!”

 _“Exactly!”_ Malcolm hissed. His hands were clawed in front of him as if he were a mad scientist who was excruciatingly close to finding the secret formula of his life’s work. “How can that be a coincidence?”

Ainsley whirled around and shouted, “We would both be _dead_ if it wasn't for dad!"

The profiler briefly gawked at her, then scoffed in disbelief, “Ainsley, he _put_ us in that position to _begin with.”_

“How!?” she shrugged dramatically. “What did he do, Malcolm? Give Tevin the knife? Tell him to go berserk and kill all those people? You can’t prove that.”

“No, I can’t,” Malcolm admitted with a tilt of his head. He shook one open hand at her. “But I _know_ something like that happened, Ainsley. I _know_ him.”

She made a face. “Oh, you _‘know’_ him?”

 _“Yes!”_ Malcolm cried. Then, he affirmed sadly, “I do.”

Ainsley nodded and pursed her lips with a measure of aggravation. “Well I _don’t_ know him, Malcolm,” she growled. “I don’t know him _at all,_ and this was my chance to get to know him.”

Her brother shook his head with a miserable look on his face. “You don’t want to. Take it from me, you don’t.”

Ainsley took a moment to study him, and she softened. “Do you wish you didn’t know him?”

He paused, looking down to examine the dressings on his wounds. It took a while before he answered her. “Sometimes.” After a moment, he lifted his head and smiled tiredly, “Have you heard of the saying, ‘ignorance is bliss?’ That’s what you had, Ains. Bliss.”

Ainsley made a face. She would _not_ have called what she had ‘bliss.’ More like ‘table scraps.’

Maclolm kept speaking. “And it was because you didn’t know him.”

“Of course I didn’t!” She extended her hand to gesture at him. “He spent every waking moment with _you!_ He gave _all_ of his attention to _you!_ I was _invisible!”_

“I know!” he called above her. He was laughing, in a small, inappropriate way. Now was not the time to be laughing, and the content of their argument was not something to laugh at either. But he couldn’t help himself. “You're _lucky!”_ His grin died, and he lowered his eyes to the floor near her. “Sometimes, I envied you.”

Ainsley froze, staring at him in disbelief. She had always envied _Malcolm._ She’d never thought that he’d envied _her._ It made her stop and think.

Malcolm threw his hand up. “I have an entire _encyclopedia_ of issues, thanks to him, and you _don't,_ Ains.” But she already knew that. He stilled as he realized, “You said so yourself. In your interview, you called me one of his victims.”

Then, he squinted at her. “What changed your mind?” Malcolm soon realized what-- or, _who--_ had. Their father. “What did he do to change your mind?”

Ainsley’s eyes shifted to look at the hospital bed. Specifically, at his leg. Before the profiler could piece together _why_ she was looking at his leg, she spoke up with a quiet voice and asked, “Did dad ever beat you?”

That took him by surprise. “That’s a... very specific word,” he smirked uneasily and canted his head, unsure where she was going with her question.

“I'm serious, did dad ever beat you?” she repeated, looking up at his eyes with an even, determined gaze.

Malcolm made a face while searching his limited memory. “Nnnno,” he answered with a shake of his head, dragging out the word. “He didn’t ever _‘beat’_ me, but that--"

“Did he ever kick you? Or hit you?” she interrogated in a politely-aggressive reporter fashion.

“Physical abuse is not the only form of abuse, Ains,” Malcolm reminded her.

Ainsley jumped at the opportunity to ask, “Was dad _abusive?”_

Malcolm was frozen for a moment, then yielded a generic, “Some might say so.”

“What do _you_ say?” she asked specifically.

He hesitated, then decided, “He was _manipulative.”_

Ainsley kept the questions rolling. “Did he love you?” she challenged.

Malcolm’s breath stuck in his throat, and he struggled to dislodge it.

“Answer me!” she snapped, unwilling to give him time to think through his response. “Did he _love_ you? _”_

“Y-yes, but...” he stuttered.

Ainsley smirked at her victory. She knew it. She _knew_ her father was capable of such a thing, as monstrous as he was.

Malcolm tried to curb her enthusiasm and explain, “But not in a--!”

Ainsley’s expression fell as she interrupted him again. “Did he love me, too?”

Malcolm’s breath caught again.

Ainsley proceeded cautiously, fearful of his honest answer. “You said you ‘know’ him,” she nodded with a hopeful look. “Do you know if he loved me, too?”

Malcolm struggled to answer her, and struggled even more to give her the right cues, maintain their eye contact, and retain some kind of poker face as he searched for the right thing to say. He smiled uncomfortably and huffed a weary laugh, “Ains, I’m not….” 

Ainsley’s heart clenched. She stared at him, absorbing everything she could about his tightly guarded facade. The profiler gave up, dropping his weak smile. He glanced down.

Ainsley felt tears beading in her eyes again.

Malcolm tried to quell her pain, answering gently, “If he did, it wasn’t….” But he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

“What? It wasn't what?” she begged, desperate to know what he was going to say. Genuine? Good? Healthy? Very much? All of the above?

Then, she identified it.

After taking her lip tightly between her teeth and nodding, she whispered, “It wasn’t like how he loved you.”

Malcolm quickly held up a hand. “That’s not what I was going to say. Ains, he didn’t love _either_ of us in the way that--!"

She laughed cruelly. “Oh, ‘either’ of us?” Was he _seriously_ placing himself in the same category as her? “You’re unbelievable.” It baffled her that he was so eager to deprecate their father and assume the worst of him, when all Martin had ever done was give his son his very best.

Ainsley knew Dr. Whitly had done some evil things --she’d never forget that-- but this wasn't about him as a murderer. This was about him as a parent. And he had been a damn good one, especially to Malcolm.

Malcolm raised his voice to regain control of her train of thought. “Ainsley, he wasn't--!”

His sister erupted with anger and took a bold step towards him, “Why can’t you just admit that _he was a good father!?”_

Her roar silenced the profiler. Malcolm stared at her as if he’d seen a ghost.

It didn’t take Ainsley long to realize why. She sounded just like their dad. The reporter caught her breath. She hadn’t thought that there was any adrenaline left in her body after the events of the afternoon, but her hands were trembling, and she struggled to calm the thundering of her heart.

_‘Deep breaths.’_

Ainsley swallowed and took a deep breath. It didn’t help.

Malcolm spoke a wary, “He got inside your head.”

He spoke as if their father was a contagious virus that had corrupted her. That was because he _was_ a virus, and Malcolm knew it. Malcolm was infected with his disease too.

His father crept into people’s minds and hearts like a parasite that seemed harmless yet was capable of inflicting great damage from deep within-- or a surgical procedure that claimed to be minimally invasive. But invasive was still invasive, no matter how minimal. A parasite was still a parasite, no matter how seemingly harmless.

“No, he didn’t,” Ainsley denied, also looking like she’d seen a ghost. Rather, touched one. Hugged one. Allowed one to _possess_ her, and had only realized it all too late.

“Of course he did.” Malcolm gasped, thinking back over the entire ordeal at Claremont. Thinking back over _everything_ , all the way from when they were children. “Of _course_ he did! It all makes _sense!”_

Malcolm’s energy lifted like a kite caught in a storm. The mad scientist had discovered the secret formula. He was both thrilled and frightened. The profiler spoke with a merciless passion, intent on making his sister share in his epiphany. “Ainsley, he took _advantage_ of you! Think about it. He was taken away from you when you were very young, which gave you a feeling of abandonment, and-- and the favoritism, _that_ gave you an emotional deprivation.”

His sister did not like what he told her. She took a small step backward as if she could avoid his geyser of revelations. “What are you saying?”

Malcolm shook his hands energetically, causing a strand of his hair to fall in front of his eyes. “Ainsley, he did this _intentionally!_ Not just what happened at Claremont, but _all_ of it. That void in your heart? He _created_ that, _intentionally,_ so you would seek to fill it! So you would _go back to him!_ Like how _I_ went back to him when I felt that I needed him.”

Ainsley shook her head, feeling an invisible knife slowly sinking somewhere into her body, tearing through her flesh, scraping against her bone. “You’re insane,” she breathed defensively. “Look at you, you’re acting like a crazy person!”

“This was _all_ part of his _plan!”_ Malcolm burst. A mosaic of emotions were sculpted across his face. Astonishment, terror, rage-- and even a bit of euphoria.

Ainsley retreated to her laptop, but instead of sitting in front of it, she slammed the screen closed and grabbed her bag. “Dad didn’t do this,” she seethed. “You’re lying. You’re making this up to make me hate him again, and it’s not going to work.” It made her sick. She loved her brother, but he could be very cruel sometimes.

Malcolm watched her pack up, and some humanity returned to him in the form of guilt. “Ains, wait. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” He tried to speak more kindly to her, reminding himself that she was a person, not a puzzle that needed to be solved. “I’m trying to prevent _him_ from hurting you.”

Ainsley snatched her jacket from the chair. “No, you’re trying to prevent _me_ from having _any_ sort of relationship with our father because you want him all to yourself, just like before.”

“That’s not true!” The profiler shifted in his hospital bed to reach for her. “Ains, don’t go.”

She yanked herself out of his hold and snarled, “The only manipulative one here is _you,_ Malcolm!” With a harsh clacking of her heels, she stormed out.

Her worried brother called after her, “Ainsley, don’t let him in!”

She held a wrist to her eyes and ignored him.

Malcolm gazed at her for as long as he could before she closed the door behind her with a loud _SLAM._

* * *

A cerulean lunch tray scraped against the metal bars of the serving counter as a man shuffled along the sparse cafeteria line. His wild eyes took in the sight of the objects beneath the glass divider, struggling to decide which was the least unpleasant option for the ‘main entree.’ He decided upon a bologna and provolone sandwich.

“Tevin!”

Tevin Standish turned to look at the inmate who joined him at the counter.

A delighted smile stretched across Martin Whitly’s bearded face. “It’s so good to see you, my friend,” the man murmured warmly, placing his tray beside Tevin’s.

That was a first. “Friend?” Tevin growled. He’d _never_ had a friend before, and he didn’t quite know what to do about this new development. He attempted to compute the word in his befuddled brain.

“Yes, we’re friends,” Dr. Whitly grinned, charmed by his innocence. “We see each other almost every day, don’t we?”

Was that all it took to make friends with someone? Tevin stared at his tray and tried to count how many friends he had-- all of which he hadn't even realized until now. He almost felt excited about it, until a loud _CRASH_ startled him. He glanced behind them at the scene of a fight that had broken out between some other inmates in the middle of the cafeteria. Somebody hadn’t taken their meds, and was raging through a schizophrenic episode.

Martin didn’t appear to notice the scuffle at all-- though he did cast a quick glance at the guards who rushed to intervene. His calm voice regained Tevin’s frazzled attention. “I have a surprise for you.”

The other man stared at him with a dull confusion, struggling to concentrate.

Martin secured his focus with a mischievous smirk and a glint in his eyes. “Can you keep it a secret? You get a reward if you do.”

Tevin nodded slowly, his bug-eyed gaze locked on the older man.

As a clamor of crashing, beating, and yelling echoed behind them, Martin lifted one edge of his tray, overlapping it with the edge of Tevin’s.

Underneath, he slid over an object.

Tevin tucked a finger under his tray to pin his gift to the bottom of it. His eyes widened.

With the transfer complete, Martin parted their trays and winked privately to him. “You never know when you’ll need a good knife.”

Tevin was frozen with shock.

“It’s yours, now,” Martin soothed.

Tevin was alarmed, but also in awe. Excited, but also scared. Martin wasn't supposed to have something like that. _Tevin_ wasn’t supposed to have something like that. He’d find himself in heaps of trouble if he was caught with such a weapon. He’d be punished. He’d be beaten. Hit, kicked, and broken.

It was a trick. It was a plant. It was not a gift from a friend, it was an act of maliciousness. He whirled to the man with an enraged accusation brewing in his throat.

“I’d like you to be a part of my interview today,” Martin offered sweetly.

Tevin’s defensiveness dispersed. He stared at Dr. Whitly like he was the gatekeeper to a vault of his wildest dreams-- who was opening it right in front of his eyes. 

The Surgeon lifted a finger to disclose one small contingency. His hands hovered together by the chain of his handcuffs. “But you have to follow strict instructions. Can you do that?”

Tevin struggled to breathe, but managed to sputter an eager, “Yes. Yes!”

“Shhhh, shh shh,” Martin hushed kindly. He subtly glanced back at the scuffle that continued to rage between the tables and benches. Three more inmates and two more guards were now involved in the violence. Tevin was deaf to it, staring diligently at his new friend. Dr. Whitly smiled at him. “Secret, remember?”

Tevin nodded.

Martin tipped his head to indicate that they should slide on down the line. Tevin quickly shuffled over and Martin followed him with a calm, steady pace.

“You have a therapy session today with Mr. Jones at two, is that right?” Martin asked as they walked.

Tevin nodded.

“Good.”

Martin reached under the glass barrier of the serving bar to grab two juice cartons, placing one on Tevin’s tray and the other on his own. The cafeteria staff had also become distracted by the fight, and _somebody_ had to do their job.

“You know… _I_ heard... Mr. Jones recently went _under the knife.”_ Martin chatted as he nodded for Tevin to slide down to the next section of the counter. Tevin shuffled along obediently.

“Surgery.” Dr. Whitly clarified, then turned his eyes to Tevin’s and elaborated, “Epigastric hernia. Do you know what that is?”

Tevin shook his head.

Martin grabbed two apples and studied the reflection in the glass in front of them. A shrill whistle blew behind them, but the fight continued. No guards were watching them whatsoever, and he didn’t blame them. They clearly had more pressing matters to attend to.

“It’s a _weak spot._ In your abdominal muscles. And it results in your _insides_ bulging _out.”_ Martin’s smile was bright. “In Mr. Jones’ case, it happened right….” He placed two fingers on the soft spot between Tevin’s sternum and his stomach. “Here.” The perfect window to an array of vital organs.

When Dr. Whitly’s touch left him, Tevin placed his own fingers on the spot, memorizing it.

Martin narrowed his eyes and empathized, “It can be _very_ painful, and it takes _weeks_ to heal.” He shrugged and once again focused on the serving counter’s bounty. “He should really be careful.”

He reached for two cups of baby carrots, flashing Tevin another smirk. “He wouldn’t want to _hurt_ it again, would he?”

Tevin soaked in his words, unblinking. He didn’t remove his disjointed gaze from his friend’s face for the entire duration of his courteous invitation.

Dr. Whitly placed a cup of carrots on Tevin’s tray and shed his smile, giving the other inmate a deep, serious look. “Do you understand what I am saying?” he carefully asked. It was very important that he did.

Tevin nodded. This time, a small, cruel smile tugged at his crooked lips.

Martin smiled back. He cast another small glance at the scuffle behind them, which was starting to die down. Somebody had earned quite a nasty nasal fracture, and another surely was suffering a grade three concussion.

Dr. Whitly nodded for the pair to move to the end of the line. Tevin shuffled to the edge of the counter.

“You watch that clock above Mr. Jones’ chair.” Dr. Whitly instructed as he stepped beside him. When they came to stand still, he drilled his gentle gaze into Tevin’s doe eyes. “And when it hits two _thirty,_ you start making your way to my cell. Does that sound like a plan?”

Tevin nodded.

Martin’s expression beamed like the sun. “Good.” Contrary to the chaos around them, he appeared completely at ease and in control.

That was because he was.

So far.

“I’ll see you later, Tevin.”

Tevin watched the man walk away. All too late, he realized he should have said, ‘thank you.’

* * *

The contents of the box shifted. Old photos, a few yearbooks, some cassette tapes, a Barbie, a horse figure, a porcelain angel, and more items stirred around each other as Ainsley gently dug her hands through the container. She felt something soft, and pulled out a stuffed wolf. Big Bad.

“No way. You’re still here.” She pulled him out of the dark depths and looked him over. He was more grey than she remembered. Faded and worn. There was a crimp in his tail and a stitch missing in his eye. Such were the injuries one suffered when they were forgotten in a box for nearly twenty years. But he hadn’t been alone. She found Little Pig soon after.

They hadn’t been burned in the fire of her father’s things. Of course not. Why would they? They were hers, not his. Her fears were all for naught.

The young woman smiled as tears welled in her eyes, and she hugged them both to her chest. She remembered that they used to feel big in her arms. They felt so tiny now. She quietly cried to herself and drew them to her face, inhaling their scent. They smelled like old dust, plush cotton, cold cardboard, and stagnant time. But even beneath all of that, one scent survived. The scent of her father.

She didn’t know how that was possible. He’d rarely touched them. Perhaps she was imagining it. Hallucinating. But she wanted to believe the lie.

Ainsley was in her old bedroom, which was now a guest room in her mother’s house. The walls were repainted. The furniture was different. The bed had a white comforter, not a pink one. It was a different bed altogether, in fact. Still a twin, but raised higher than the twin she had while growing up. The closet was covered with different folding doors.

Somehow, her heart ached when she took it all in. She could still spy phantoms of all the buried memories-- which had so obviously been layered over by the excessive changes her mother made to the house after her father’s arrest.

Ainsley sat on her bed. It _wasn’t_ her bed, but it was where her bed _used_ to be. She looked at the room from that position, recalling the perspective she’d had every night when she’d gone to bed. Images matched in her memory, overlaying with the structure of the room. It looked smaller. Maybe that was because she was bigger.

She stared at the door, which she had softly closed behind her upon her entrance. She didn’t want her mother to come in looking for her. Yet Ainsley wondered if the door would open. She found herself _waiting_ for it, hoping her dad would walk through it, dressed in his red sweater instead of his white prison uniform.

A lump swelled in her throat. She wanted to see him again. She wanted to see his smile, and hear his voice. She wiped her face and inhaled a big, quivering breath. Then she opened her bag and drew out her laptop, placing it on the bed. After tucking her stuffed animals close beside her leg, she put on her headset, opened her video editing program, and continued combing through her work.

Ainsley stared into her father’s eyes. She analyzed every word, every shift of his gaze, every twitch of his face, and every smile of his lips-- trying to find the truth, trying to find the lies. She studied the way his face lit up when he saw Malcolm, who had rushed in to unintentionally interrupt their interview. That happiness had certainly been truthful.

She studied everything. She even studied the hole in the footage where he had deleted the segment of his provoked outburst, trying to remember everything that had been erased and hidden from her. Trying to remember the ugly side of him, and the threatening power of his anger. It was difficult.

There was a good chunk of footage that was blank, and only held their voices off-screen. One of which was when Jin was first stabbed. She found herself staring at the footage of his surgery, watching it without queasiness or discomfort. It was easy to watch through the dissociation of a screen. Ironically, it was a peaceful thing to watch. Almost meditative. She listened to her father’s voice all over again as he walked her through the process of draining Jin’s pleural cavity.

Ainsley realized that the lockdown had repaired --in an unexpected way-- some chunk of their missing time. Her underlying goal had been achieved after all. She knew her father better now because of that lockdown. Honestly, what better way to get to know somebody than suffering through, enduring, and surviving such a traumatic and hellish event such as that with them? Even if none (or very little) of her questions were verbally answered, she had received _some_ answers.

She no longer had to struggle to recall what his grin looked like, or the way the corners of his eyes crinkled and his cheeks swelled. She knew the shape of his beard, and how it framed his face like a lion’s healthy mane. She knew how the prominent white streak curled in his hair. She knew what he was like under pressure; calm and deliberate. She knew what words he used to keep her soothed and what actions he was willing to do to keep her safe. She knew what it felt like to hug him as an adult, when their bodies were closer in size.

She knew some things, now. She would still be questioning those things if she hadn’t scheduled that interview with him. If it hadn’t been transformed into a complete catastrophe. She dared believe that the catastrophe hadn’t been all that bad.

She no longer wondered if he had loved her.

The truth was, he had. Just not as much as he’d loved Malcolm.

She supposed something was better than nothing.

Ainsley had bawled when the cops came to take him away that night. That was when the questions had started piling up. She’d wondered _why_ they’d taken him away. She’d wondered why Mommy was devastated, and why Malcolm was so cold and shut-down for years afterward. She’d wondered who was going to keep them all safe from the monsters if Daddy was gone. 

She had been too young to understand what had happened. What the police had found. What he had done. It took her a long while to come to terms with the fact that _Daddy_ was the monster. It took her a long time to believe what her mother told her. To understand what had happened. Mommy had said things would be better with him gone. But they were not better. They were worse. Her home had been destroyed that night. Her father had been physically torn from them, and she’d felt it. Like a crucial thread unraveling their entire family tapestry. Or a severed artery, draining their joined hearts.

Ainsley wasn’t placed into therapy like Malcolm was. Ainsley didn’t have a father figure in her life like Malcolm had in Mr. Arroyo. All Ainsley had were questions. When she was older, she’d looked through the photographs and the news articles. Those had impacted her the most. The news articles. The cruel opinions and judgmental reports of the ruthless press-- who knew _nothing_ about their family, yet who knew so much more than she had ever known while she’d been young, and a part of that family.

Maybe Ainsley had thought that if she became a reporter, then she’d be the one digging up the truth and finding the answers to all of her endless questions. Maybe she could help other people find the answers they needed to achieve peace, too. Maybe that had been a silly thing to believe. Maybe she should have--

“Ainsley.”

She gasped and opened her eyes, whirling to face the door. It was still closed. Her fingertips touched her headphones, but she realized that was where the voice was coming from. She looked at her laptop again and listened.

Her father was in the frame, standing in front of the camera. He glanced off screen, to the left where the door to his cell was. Dried blood painted his cardigan and uniform. Just as he looked into the camera lens again, she slammed her fingertips on the space bar to pause the footage.

When had that been recorded?

She scrubbed backwards in the timeline, finding only a vast space of blank footage. Footage of the camera patiently watching the empty chair where Tevin had sat, and the bookshelves behind it. This new footage had happened after Tevin’s death. After Dr. Whitly had left his cell. After everything with Malcolm in the hallway.

Ainsely’s heart drummed. This had happened after their embrace.

The reporter stopped breathing, staring at the screen. She scrubbed forward to the place where he entered the frame, and played the new footage.

“Ainsley,” he spoke her name, slightly out of breath from his jog. He glanced at the cell door, then looked back into the lens of the camera with a small smile. For once, it was not a very convincing one. “It just occurred to me that I… forgot to say something to you.”

She could see the truth behind his eyes. He was _sad._ She’d never seen him sad before. She doubted anyone ever had.

“Something that I _should_ have said.”

She stared at him, unblinking, her hand over her mouth.

“Something I think you’ll want to hear.”

Martin Whitly took a breath, hesitated, and then smiled with an expression so fond it almost looked like it pained him. “I love you _very much,_ sweetheart.”

His words took her breath away. Emotions welled in her eyes, heart, and throat. She saw regret welling in his.

“I always have. And I always will,” he reassured, as if he knew she needed to hear it.

She believed him.

After a beat, Martin’s smile shifted to something more playful and charming. “Tell Malcolm to take care of that leg for me. And to stay out of trouble for a while. As I recall, mister….” He paused to remember the name. _“Lazar,_ doesn’t like having his work interrupted.”

He winked. “Something we had in common.”

The marker on her timeline was nearing the end of the footage. It moved like a needle counting down an alarm clock. The last remaining time they had together burned away all too quickly.

“Goodbye, sweetheart.” Her father blew her a kiss with a delicate extension of his forearm, moving his fingers away from his bearded lips like he was conveying a tender ‘thank you’ in sign language. He smiled one last time, then reached forward to stop the footage.

The frame froze in a distorted blur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this fic! I'm rather proud of it, and I hope that it gave you a new perspective on the characters of Prodigal Son. Episode 7 was one of my favorite episodes, and it heavily inspired me to write a companion piece.
> 
> If you'd like to check out my other Prodigal Son fics, visit this page: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferNapier/works?fandom_id=31672270
> 
> Feel free to comment if you'd like to. I don't bite, so let me know which parts resonated with you and which parts didn't. I love receiving comments and interacting with readers. Please ask if you have any questions, or give me a heads-up if you spy any typos!
> 
> If you'd like to be notified when I post new works, you can subscribe to me as an author on my profile! Feel free to follow me on one of my various Tumblr blogs, also listed on my profile. If you have any fic requests or want to trade art for a fic, you can reach me at jennifernapier1142@gmail.com.


	10. (Fanart for Ambivalence)

YOU GUYS! s9aceturbulance on Tumblr made this amazing [fanart](https://s9aceturbulance.tumblr.com/post/635706913332625408/ambivalence-chapter-1-jennifernapier) for this story and I had to share it!  
Give them some love via a like and follow! <3


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